
r,in.. "BF/3Q) 

Book ^a/l_ 



G3ipghtiN?. 



COKRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 



A CLOUD 
OF WITNESSES 



BY 

ANNA DE KOVEN 

(MRS. REGINALD ii KOVEN) 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

JAMES H. HYSLOP, Ph.D., LL.D, 

SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN SOaETY 
FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 




NEW YORK 

E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



.0^ 



4f 



Copyright, 1920, by 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 



AU Rights Reserved 



MAR -2 IS20 



Printed in the United States of America 



2)Ci.A559920 



'W'i 



IN ORDER THAT SHE 
THO' DEAD, MAY YET SPEAK 

THIS BOOK 

HER MEMORIAL 

IS COMPILED BY ONE OP THE 

MANY WHO BEAR HER 

IN 

PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE 



It will he proved in the future, I do not know 
when or where, that also in this life the human 
soul stands in an indissoluble communion with 
all the immaterial heings of the spiritual world, 
that it produces effects therein and in exchange 
receives impressions fr'om them, without how- 
ever becoming conscious of them as long as all 
stands well. It would he a Messing if such a 
systematic constitution of^ the spiritual world 
as conceived hy us had not merely to he inferred 
from the too hypothetical conceptions of the 
spiritual nature generally, hut would he in- 
ferred or at least conjectured as probable from 
real and generally acknowledged observations. 

Immanuel Kant. 



PEEFACE 

In giving the records of what I believe to 
be actual communications from relations and 
beloved friends who have passed from the earth, 
I am moved by a profound conviction that any 
facts which tend to prove that the soul is im- 
mortal should not be withheld. I think it my 
duty to present them and leave it to the judg- 
ment of my readers as to their significance and 
to their imagination to account for them. In 
promulgating the possible analogy between the 
formula of materialized organisms, as stated 
by Dr. Geley, with the ^* mentally manipulated" 
substance of the other world I wish to disavow 
any assumption that it is scientifically proved. 
Again, in quoting Sir William Crookes' hypo- 
thesis regarding the peculiar organization of 
the nerve ganglia of the sensitive, I state only 
that Mrs. Vernon's method of receiving the 
communications which I publish seems to con- 
firm his hypothesis. 

This hypothesis, which suggests the impact 
of thought waves upon peculiarly organized or 
developed nerve ganglia, is, however, in defi- 



viii PREFACE 

nite accord with the universal wave theory of 
the transmission of light and heat and sound, 
and hence can be received without undue in- 
credulity. Possessed of no explanation which 
can lead to a refusal to believe that my friends 
have sent me these messages, and constrained 
by the expression of their desire that they 
should be published, I obey their behest. 

That the inexpressible joy which this proof 
of their continued and happy existence has 
given to me may bring comfort and hope to 
others, is the object of this book and my pro- 
foundest desire. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction by James H. Htslop 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. ''La Caravane Passe, Malgr:^ les 

Aboiements des Chiens" .... 1 

II. Mrs. Vernon 37 

III. "Lovely and Beautiful in Their Lives, 

IN Death They Were Not Divided*' 43 

IV. "On Earth the Broken Arcs'' . . 53 
V. "In Heaven the Perfect Round" . 106 

VI. The Investigators 171 

Vll. Mr. Edwin Friend 191 

VIII. Old Acquaintances 227 

IX. A Record OF Materialization . . . 239 

X. And Our Last Enemy Is Death . . . 249 



INTRODUCTION 

BY James Hyslop 

I PEESONALLY kiiGw the cMef parties involved 
in this record. Mrs. de Koven's father I knew 
as a member of the Board of Trustees of Lake 
Forest University, when I was a teacher there. 
Her mother I knew at the same time, and Mrs. 
de Koven herself as a student there. The per- 
sonality involved in the record, I also knew at 
that time. These facts enable me to assure the 
reader that the author is no ordinary adven- 
turer or curiosity monger, in the field of psychic 
research. She is the author of a ^^Life of Paul 
Jones'' which has a place on the shelves of biog- 
raphy, and she is the wife of Mr. Reginald de 
Koven, the composer of well-known operas. 

These statements suffice to give the proper 
setting to what follows in this book. Mrs. de 
Koven seems to have had no interest in psychic 
research until the death of her sister, to whom 
she was devotedly attached, and the shock of 
this loss, as in thousands of other cases, brought 
her up at once to the realization that she had 
no philosophic or religious view of the world 



xii INTRODUCTION 

that would enable her to reconcile herself to the 
order of things. She set about trying to find 
if there was any reason to believe that the ob- 
ject of her affection survived death, and the re- 
sults of her inquiries are recorded here. She 
has not shirked the notoriety that such a de- 
cision imposes, as outweighing her duty to the 
public and to those who seek consolation for a 
like loss. The book is the result of profound 
convictions and is not subject to any impeach- 
ment unless the rigid scientific sceptic chooses 
to dispute its findings. Its motives and sin- 
cerity cannot be questioned. 

I personally know, also, Mrs. Vernon, the 
psychic or automatist involved in the record. 
She is a private person receiving no payment 
whatever for her services, but giving her time 
and effort as a labor of love. She is the wife 
of a business man in New York City and passed 
through a very trying ordeal in the development 
of her psychic powers, as is often the case. No 
taint of professionalism can touch her, and all 
the ordinary suspicions that have attached to 
this subject and its mercenary votaries are 
wanting in this instance. The only thing that 
readers have to consider is whether the data are 
explicable by chance coincidence, guessing, or 
normal knowledge casually acquired and thrown 
out subconsciously without any personal recog- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

nition of its source. Mrs. Vernon's entire igno- 
rance of Mrs. de Koven for some time after the 
experiments began, and the nature of the facts 
in most instances are quite ample security 
against the suspicion or reproach of even casual 
knowledge on her part. So the reader has at 
least something supernormal to explain. The 
author does not need to go farther than to state 
the facts and to leave them to the consideration 
of the sceptic, whose business it will be to offer 
evidence for any theory he may entertain. 

The evidential incidents will commend them- 
selves to readers as excellent, at least in many 
instances. Their meaning can be mistaken only 
by the most determined sceptic, bent on not ac- 
cepting anything supernormal. This is not the 
place to illustrate incidents having evidential 
interest, but those not known by Mrs. de Koven 
and afterward verified by her will pass as giving 
trouble to believers in telepathy, even though 
that be conceded for what she knew. The per- 
sonal identity of the communicator is clearly re- 
flected in incidents which the record relates 
and explains, and I would assign appropriate 
value to them in any scientific judgment of their 
character. 

I would not endorse the philosophical ideas 
expressed through Mrs. Vernon, and suggested, 
though not asserted, by Mrs. de Koven. Nor 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

would I oppose such views if adequate evidence 
were adduced for them. Mrs. de Koven states 
explicitly in the Preface her own attitude to- 
ward them. Any one has the right to think of 
them as he pleases. The important part of the 
material is the evidence of supernormal phe- 
nomena, and there the emphasis may be laid, 
while we wait for more light in the future. Mrs. 
de Koven does not assert any philosophic con- 
clusions, but only wonders, like many others, 
whether they might not be a hint in the right 
direction. 

The stress of readers, however, should be on 
the facts and their evident pertinence to the 
doctrine of survival. That is the crux of the 
problem and there is no reason why we should 
not regard the record as a valuable contribution 
to the evidence of survival. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 



CHAPTEE I 

La Caeavane Passe, Malgee les Abquiements 
DBS Chiens. — Arab proverb. 

THE bourne from which no traveler re- 
turns'' is no longer impenetrable, no 
longer silent. Authentic voices have spoken 
from behind the veil; travelers have returned, 
visiting not only by the light of the moon, but 
facing by full daylight the recognizing gaze of 
those who knew their earthly forms and speech. 
Is there proof of this! Are the human hopes 
of immortality about to be confirmed? The an- 
swer, based on the testimony of numberless 
truthful witnesses, is affirmative. 

Beaching in its slow development the age of 
reason, humanity has turned the eyes of science 
and of practical investigation upon this ac- 
cumulated testimony, discovering not only new 
powers in the incarnate soul, but learning that 
those powers are significant of an endless exist- 

1 



2 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ence, a destiny of ultimate perfection, of unim- 
aginable bliss. 

The resolution of what have, from uncounted 
ages, been considered as miraculous or super- 
normal manifestations of human faculties into 
normal perceptions and normal correspondences 
with natural laws, has been the effort of the last 
fifty years. 

Yet evidence of what are called supernormal 
phenomena exists in the earliest of human rec- 
ords. Out of the deep night of time the dim 
traditions of our barbaric ancestors glimmer 
with fiery portents and tell of powerful spirits 
of good and evil. Religion, in some of its earli- 
est phases, is based on the manifestation of so- 
called supernormal powers in man. Criticism 
of the unsatisfactory behavior of a trance me- 
dium is found on an Egyptian tomb. The 
Pythian clairvoyants threatened and instructed 
the Greeks from their subterranean Delphic 
caves. Our own American Indians, near to the 
heart of nature, often encountered the shades 
of their returning chieftains in the painted au- 
tumn forests or amid the deep snows of winter. 
Their belief in an endless life was intuitive, 
familiar, and expressed in many legends of 
poetic beauty. 

The Oriental study of the supernormal phase 
of human perception, of the celestial autonomy 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 3 

and of the progressive evolution of the soul 
has grown into an imposing mass of theory. 
Centuries in advance of the western world, the 
adepts of ancient India learned to manipulate 
the non-material part of the human organism 
until natural laws were defied and normal 
physiology nullified. That part of the human 
organism called astral has been voluntarily 
separated from the fleshly part, and projected 
into space. Living bodies, buried for weeks, 
have emerged to resume their former activities. 

Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist, the seer and 
prophet, projecting his spirit through his power 
of ecstatic vision, into the supernal realms, re- 
turned to instruct the earth dwellers of his 
philosophic day, regarding the life of the liber- 
ated soul. Swedenborg, the omniscient, in a 
library of volumes, not only revealed his intui- 
tive knowledge of many of the later discoveries 
of science, but in similar ecstatic voyages, fol- 
lowed Plotinus into the infinite, returning with 
information similar and illuminating as to the 
superior and universal laws of the supernal 
regions. 

The legends of the Eoman Catholic Church 
are full of recorded miracles which now fall 
into the categories of Psychic Phenomena. The 
Sacred Word itself laid the foundation of the 
modem belief in immortality upon the super- 



4 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

normal phenomenon of the resurrection of 
Christ. 

Why, then, with all this testimony, with all 
this proof of the deathless spirit in man, has the 
world groped so long in a darkness, relieved 
only by the flickering beacon of the intuitive be- 
lief in immortality? Why has it seemingly 
preferred that darkness? Why has it hugged 
close the agony of death, believing it to be utter 
separation ? Why has it lingered by the closed 
portals of the tomb? Because of the slow 
growth of the reasoning faculty in man. Be- 
cause also of a determined repugnance to ac- 
cept evidence in apparent disagreement with 
religious doctrine, and with the material inves- 
tigations and the ever changing conclusions of 
science. 

But Science itself, with its development of 
the reasoning faculty and a like growth in ex- 
actitude of observation, had at last provided an 
equipment for the examination of supernormal 
phenomena. The rise of modern spiritualism 
in the United States, due largely to the *^Hydes- 
ville Knockings" and the automatically in- 
spired writings of the unlettered sage, Andrew 
Jackson Davis, was coincident with the state- 
ment of the evolutionary theory as promul- 
gated by Darwin and Wallace. The represen- 
tatives of this triumphant evolutionary mate- 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 6 

rialism were summoned by the English public, 
infuriated by the pretensions of the abhorred 
spiritualists, to refute their statements and to 
put to naught their doctrines. 

In the year 1872, Sir William Crookes, then 
young and in the full tide of his brilliant career 
of important scientific discoveries, essayed to 
put the pretensions of the celebrated English 
medium, D. D. Home, to the test of a rigid 
examination in his own laboratory. The re- 
sults were startlingly different to what had 
been confidently expected by the incredulous 
public. Not only did Crookes assert that Home 
had actually performed his miracles of levita- 
tion, of the handling of live coals, and of other 
supernormal feats before his own eyes and 
those of many witnesses, but in experiments 
with a medium, Miss Cook, also in his own 
laboratory, he asserted that he had seen a 
materialized individual appear who walked and 
talked with him and his witnesses. Her pulse 
was taken by Sir William; he was photo- 
graphed, standing between Miss Cook and the 
new individual, Miss King, and these photo- 
graphs exist to this day, together with the later 
testimony of Sir William as to his unaltered 
conviction of the reality of what he had seen 
and recorded. A storm of invective broke over 
the head of the honest and courageous scientist, 



6 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

and the inventor of the Crookes tubes, the fore- 
runner of the X-rays, the discoverer of Thal- 
lium and other chemical elements, was forced 
to a cessation of his psychic investigations, be- 
lieving, probably with reason, that his splendid 
powers would achieve better results in an un- 
challenged field of operation and experiment. 

The storm of invective still raged, and was 
by no means abated by the publication of the 
accounts of the examination of psychic phe- 
nomena undertaken by the Dialectical Society. 
This company of scientific investigators also 
announced their conviction of the authenticity 
of these phenomena. Thus Science investigat- 
ing was repudiated by Science protesting, with 
purely a priori arguments, and the public was 
left to its helpless incredulity and dismay. 

Other results of the modern coincidence of 
developed reason with developed observation 
were at this time beginning to make themselves 
felt, forcing an examination of the historic 
foundations of the long accepted doctrines of 
the church. The mass of literature, embodying 
what is called Modern or Higher Criticism of 
the Bible, flooded the universities and sapped 
the foundations of the belief in the verbal in- 
spiration of the Bible, altered the chronological 
sequence of its evangels, and disturbed the faith 
of centuries. In the University of Cambridge, 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 7 

Mr. F. W. H. Myers, the poet, the elegant classic 
scholar, the devoted churchman, submitted to 
the acid test of this disintegrating exegesis 
with an agony of doubt. In his distress he was 
moved at last to consult with his friend. Prof. 
Sidgwick. Walking down the English lane 
one starry night, he revealed to his companion 
his despair of the scheme of things, his unwill- 
ingness to contemplate it, deprived as he was 
of his cherished belief in the validity of the 
doctrines of the Church of England. *'Was 
there,'' he asked Prof. Sidgwick, **one hint of 
the survival of the soul in the unsavory phe- 
nomena of the clairvoyants, one ray of light in 
the mass of repugnant spiritualistic doctrine?'' 
Admitting a repugnance as profound as that of 
his friend for the deeply discredited clairvoy- 
ants and the equally despised spiritualists, Prof. 
Sidgwick 's conscientious accurate mind could 
not deny that, in his opinion, such a hopeful 
possibility might exist. A hint, he said, 
the barest hint there might be, of the proof 
his friend desired. To Mr. Myers it was a 
question of life or death ; nothing less than the 
life eternal or the death eternal of the soul. 
To the search in the evil smelling haunts of all 
discoverable mediums, to the examination of 
the scientific institutions for the study of patho- 
logical phenomena such as hypnotism and som- 



8 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

nambulism, lie determined to devote himself. 
Eminent as was the collection of distinguished 
men who were his associates in the English So- 
ciety for Physical Eesearch, which was founded 
in the year 1882, Mr. Myers was the inspiring 
element of that organization. His work entitled 
*^ Human Personality and its Survival of Bod- 
ily Death," is the epoch-making text-book of 
the new science. In the opinion of the great 
Genevan psychologist, Prof. Flournoy, it is its 
first authoritative statement. *'If the veil 
which Myers lifted does not fall," says Flour- 
noy, **he will, by this book, take his place as 
the last of the triad of the discoverers^ of the 
law of the universe, beside Copernicus who 
discovered the cosmological law, by Darwin 
who revealed the biological law." 

The structure of his philosophy rises in five 
closely connected stages. First, experimental 
telepathy is established. In his conclusions re- 
garding what now seems to general intelligence 
as a frequent form of communication, Mr. 
Myers referred to the many rigidly conducted 
experiments leading to the establishment of this 
human faculty, conducted by his co-workers in 
the Society for Psychical Research. Many 
thousands of experiments with hundreds of in- 
dividuals were conducted with mathematical 
calculations as to the possibility of coincidence 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 9 

in the experiments. Mr. Podmore and Mr. 
Gurney, who, with Mr. Myers, published the 
first labors of the Society, in the book called 
*^ Phantasms of the Living,^' considered that 
the transference of an idea or image from one 
individual to another without visible means was 
established beyond any doubt. Telepathy, as 
represented in their first investigation, was 
called * * experimentaP ' because it was the con- 
scious effort of individuals, both aware of the 
significance of the experiments, to communicate 
their thoughts to each other. 

The second stage in the argument for sur- 
vival which Mr. Myers presents in his book is 
called ** transitional telepathy *' or transfer- 
ence of a thought or image to another uncon- 
scious and unaware percipient, as when an in- 
dividual projects his own thoughts or even his 
own exteriorized image into the presence of a 
distant friend. Eigidly tested incidents of the 
manifestation of this faculty in man, exercised 
voluntarily in certain cases at the request of 
the experimenters of the Society, were recorded 
in ** Phantasms of the Living." The third step 
in Mr. Myers' argument is * ^ spontaneous te- 
lepathy,'' as in the numberless recorded in- 
stances of the appearance of an individual, 
through a projected hallucination or otherwise, 
to those nearly related, at the moment of danger 



10 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

or death. The fourth stage is called *^ partial 
invasion" of one mind by another, as in hyp- 
notism. Lastly, ^* complete possession'* of a 
human organism by a discamate spirit as in 
the case of trance mediums, such as Mrs. Piper 
of Boston. When these spirits succeed in prov- 
ing their identity, the last and crowning proof 
of survival and communication is attained. In- 
formation furnished by the possessing spirits 
when absolutely new to both medium and sitter, 
and afterwards verified, is called veridical. In 
the mass of information provided by Mrs. Piper 
alone during the twenty years in which she 
manifested her remarkable powers, this proof 
was furnished with an overwhelming quantity 
of detail. The perfection of her integrity was 
recognized by such witnesses as Prof. William 
James of Harvard, and the completeness of her 
unconsciousness during trance was unbroken 
even through the cruel application of acid to 
her tongue. 

The labors of the English Society for Psy- 
chical Eesearch were directed primarily in 
amassing proof of telepathic communication 
between incarnate minds, in the study of hyp- 
notism, somnambulism, crystal gazing, psy- 
chometry, and other so-called supernormal 
human faculties, as well as in the examinations 
of ghostly appearances, hallucinations, and in 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 11 

the apparitions of both discarnate and incarnate 
personalities. This method of procedure was 
both conservative and constructive, laying the 
foundation for the comprehension of the powers 
of the liberated spirit upon that of the veri- 
fied supernormal activities and powers of 
the still incarnate human individual. The 
manifested powers of Mrs. Piper provided im- 
portant evidence of the possibility of communi- 
cation between the incarnate and the discarnate, 
and not only all the English investigators of 
psychic phenomena, but also those in Europe 
and in Eussia were quickly aware of their cru- 
cial significance. Mrs. Piper had demonstrated 
her powers for the American Society for Psy- 
chical Research for many years, and was finally 
invited to England to permit an investigation 
by the members of the English Society for Psy- 
chical Research. This investigation was con- 
ducted with all possible tests, and before the 
most eminent witnesses, and the records are 
part of the subject matter of the Journals of 
the Society. They invariably attest her integ- 
rity and the reality of the phenomena which she 
presented. 

A very interesting phase of proof growing 
out of the establishment of the several societies 
for psychic research in England, France and 
America is that furnished by their members 



12 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

who have died and in their discamate form 
have cooperated with their former associates 
in establishing the possibility of communica- 
tion. The method adopted by the late Mr. 
Myers, by Professors Sidgwick, Verrall and 
Butcher, all of the Cambridge group, showed 
the utmost ingenuity and proved the persistence 
of their characteristic traits and the retention 
in their entirety of the stores of classic erudi- 
tion which had been accumulated during life. 
Never before had such a united and intelligent 
intention been observable in communications 
from the unseen. A system called that of 
^* cross correspondence'' was initiated by these 
invisible collaborators. One bit of unintelligi- 
ble information was given to one medium, which 
was later completed and made intelligible by 
further information given to another medium. 
A riddle based on the most erudite classic 
knowledge, communicated in cryptic fragments 
during several years and to as many as three 
di:fferent mediums, was the invention of the 
surviving intelligence of Prof. Butcher and 
Prof. Verrall. The record of this finally com- 
prehended riddle was published by Mr. Gerald 
Balfour in a recent number of the Journal of 
the English Society for Psychical Research, 
under the title of the ''Ear of Dionsyius,'* and 
represents one of the most satisfactory and 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 13 

successful example of ** cross correspond- 
ence. ' * 

The striking expression used by Sir Oliver 
Lodge, in regard to the cooperation of his col- 
laborators on the other side, expressed the ex- 
ulting conviction that the proof of survival was 
actually at hand. *^Like excavators engaged in 
boring a tunnel, from opposite ends, amid the 
roar of water and other noises, we are begin- 
ning to hear now and again the stroke of the 
pickaxes of our comrades on the other side.'' 

One of the most impressive of the communi- 
cations which Sir Oliver relates in his book — 
^'Raymond" — ^is the capping of this sentence 
by Mr. Myers to Lady Lodge, at her first an- 
onymous visit to a medium after the death of 
her son. ' * Tell him, ' ' said Mr. Myers, speaking 
to the entranced medium, ' ^ that he can not only 
hear the sound of our picks on the other side of 
the tunnel, but we have made a big hole. ' ' 

It is well known that Dr. Hodgson, the late 
deceased secretary of the American Society for 
Psychical Research, first visited Mrs. Piper 
with the intention of exposing the falsity of her 
claims to mediumistic powers and that he was 
transformed from skeptic to an ardent convert 
to the reality of psychic phenomena and the 
possibility of communication by his conversa- 
tions with the discarnate spirit of his friend. 



14 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

George Pelham. These communications in Mr. 
Pelham's own voice, speaking through Mrs. 
Piper's entranced organism, were of such start- 
ling naturalness and proffered such indubitable 
evidence of his identity, that they not only 
served to convert Dr. Hodgson, but remain as 
classic evidence of the power of the discamate 
spirit to speak through borrowed vocal organs. 
They may be compared in their evidentiality 
with the records of Sir William Crookes in re- 
gard to the phenomena of materialization. 

Although the intention to apply scientific 
methods of observation to the investigation of 
psychic phenomena had been avowed by the 
Psychical Eesearch Society of England at the 
outset of its organization, this method has been 
for the most part applied to the examination of 
the so-called supernormal powers of the incar- 
nate mind, such as telepathy, and the recording 
of what are termed the mental manifestation of 
these powers. The investigation of psychic 
phenomena called physical has been, since the 
year 1906, very actively pursued by distin- 
guished experimenters in Italy, France, and 
Germany. The physical manifestations of the 
celebrated Italian medium, Eusapia Palladino, 
aroused the most intense interest, and investi- 
gations of her powers, pursued by such men 
as Sir William Crookes, Mr. Myers, Sir Oliver 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 15 

Lodge, Lombroso, Prof. Flournoy and Dr. Max- 
well, were followed by books of several of the 
investigators, in which the authenticity of these 
powers was admitted, and various theories pro- 
pounded in explanation of them. The works 
of Flournoy, Maxwell and Lombroso record 
their admission that Palladino could and did 
move heavy objects without contact, but the 
principal object of their consideration was to 
explain the formation of the temporary mate- 
rialized organisms which they had all seen at- 
the Palladino seances. Prof. Flournoy de- 
clared his conviction that a force, proceeding 
from the medium which he called ^^ psycho 
dynamism'' produced these temporary organ- 
isms. Dr. Maxwell shared in this opinion, but 
the enunciation of this hypothesis was the sum 
of their conclusions. They were, however, only 
the forerunners of later and more fortunate 
investigators who not only again promulgated 
the existence of such a force, but who have an- 
nounced a definitive hypothesis of the creative 
process of these organisms. This hypothesis 
points precisely in the direction along which 
Dr. Maxwell and Prof. Flournoy were proceed- 
ing, to the coordination between so-called su- 
pernormal phenomena and those called normal. 
To ultimate knowledge, nothing is miracu- 
lous. Every manifestation is actually in strict 



16 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

conformity with universal law. From new ex- 
periments conducted recently in both France 
and England, facts and conclusions have been 
deduced which have this important significance. 
They also point to a new theory of matter. An 
astonishing fact leading to this ultimate con- 
clusion was recorded in Dr. Maxwell's book 
called ^^Metapsychical Phenomena," published 
in Bordeaux in the year 1906, several years be- 
fore the decisive experiments in England and 
France were conducted. This indication was 
minute, smaller indeed than the tiny flower 
whose mysterious origin Tennyson thus apos- 
trophized. 

** Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of your crannies; 
I hold you root and all in my hand 

Little flower, but if I could understand 
What you are root and aU and all in all 
I should know what God and man is." 

"What was this indication pregnant with pos- 
sibilities so incalculable? What was this por- 
tent which promised nothing less than the uni- 
formity of all law and the unity of all matter? 
It was the sound of a thread scraping on a china 
statuette. Dr. Maxwell heard this sound and 
recorded the fact. He did not recognize its 
significance. Where did this thread come 
from? It issued from the body of his friend, 



LA CARAVANE PASSE IT 

M. Meurice, a non-professional medinm, who, 
from his chair, moved by this invisible but not 
inaudible thread, the statuette upon the mantel- 
piece. M. Meurice found that tables moved up- 
wards towards his hands when he held them 
suspended over them. M. Meurice stated that 
a substance like threads seemed to emerge from 
his hands when the table rose towards them. 
Dr. Maxwell recorded the movements of the 
table and the statements of M. Meurice, as he 
recorded his own aural perception of the scrap- 
ing thread upon the statuette. This was the 
sum of Dr. Maxwell's observations. 

Another indication of the agency of these 
threads in the movements of tables and other 
objects, appears in the accounts of the experi- 
ments with Eusapia Palladino. She stated that 
she felt the presence of these threads upon her 
hands when she moved tables, heavy wardrobes 
and other objects in the view of her very emi- 
nent scientific investigators. Later experiments, 
which revealed the emission of a substance 
sometimes resembling these threads from the 
body of a medium, were conducted in Paris by 
Madame Alexandre Bisson, in connection with 
the Baron Schrenk-Notzing. These experi- 
ments were of vastly greater importance, for 
the experimenters saw and photographed the 
substance as it emerged from the body of a 



18 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

young woman called Eva C. Tlie medium, un- 
dressed first, and then clad in a single garment, 
was rigidly examined by Prof. Schrenk-Notzing 
and the experiments were witnessed by as many 
as one hundred other French scientists and phy- 
sicians. She was placed behind curtains which 
were, however, left open, the medium's hands 
holding them apart and grasped firmly by the 
hands of the experimenters. The appearance of 
the substance usually announced itself by the 
presence of luminous spots varying in size, 
which were scattered over the left side of the 
black smock of the medium. Further emissions 
of larger extent appeared, coming from the 
crown of the medium's head, from the breasts, 
mouth and from the ends of her fingers. 
The substance had three colors — ^black, white 
and gray. Sometimes it issued in threads, 
sometimes in thick cords or flat ribbons. 
A remarkable membranous form with fringed 
edges and swellings closely resembled the 
caul. Sometimes the amount of this sub- 
stance was small and sometimes it issued 
in a mass of disorganized material like 
protoplasm, and covered the medium like a 
cloud from head to foot. The substance 
could be felt. It was cold and damp and some- 
times slimy. Sometimes when it took the form 
of cords it was hard and dry. The threads 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 19 

were stiff but elastic. The substance was mo- 
bile. Sometimes it appeared and disappeared 
instantaneously. It was sensitive and wben 
touched by the hand of an observer, caused pain 
to the medium. It was sensitive to light. A 
strong light caused the medium to cry out, but 
she could sometimes support full daylight and 
a magnesium flashlight which permitted photo- 
graphs to be taken, could be borne, altho it 
caused her to start violently. 

The most remarkable property of the sub- 
stance, however, was its tendency to assume 
forms. It seldom remained in a disorganized 
mass, or in the shape of threads or cords. It 
tended rapidly to assume organic forms which 
appeared enmeshed in it, and then as if manipu- 
lated by the hand of an unseen sculptor, it took 
the shape of admirably molded hands and feet, 
of heads with thick hair upon solid skulls, of 
complete and sometimes beautiful faces. Com- 
plete figures also appeared and presented every 
appearance of the living human being. The 
materialized organs were not inert, but were 
apparently alive and grasped objects with in- 
tention. Sometimes the organisms were less 
than life size. Sometimes they were flat and 
assumed the natural dimensions under the eyes 
of the observers. 

In the several volumes published by both 



20 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Madame Bisson and Prof. Schrenk-Notzing, in 
the year 1909, a great variety of photographs 
were presented, showing not only the admirably 
molded hands and feet and faces, but also the 
imperfect forms. Dr. Geley, former surgeon 
of the Lyons hospital and Laureate of the med- 
ical faculty, in recent experiments with the 
same medium, has observed precisely the same 
phenomena which Madame Bisson and Prof. 
Schrenk-Notzing have recorded. His account 
of these experiments was presented in a dis- 
course to the members of the General Institute 
of Psychology in the Theater of the Medical 
College of France on January 28, 1918. 

Although in his preface to Madame Bisson 's 
published account of their mutually conducted 
experiments. Prof. Schrenk-Notzing asserts 
their common ignorance as to the creative 
process of these materialized organisms, Ma- 
dame Bisson had, in fact, arrived at one im- 
portant hypothesis from the experiments, 
namely, the unity and identity of all matter. 
Dr. Geley 's experiments led him to coincide 
with this hypothesis, but he went still further, 
for he promulgated a complete formula of this 
creative process. The title of his discourse at 
the College of France was: ''The So-called Su- 
pernormal Phenomena of Thought Sculpture.'' 
The French term ' ' L 'ideoplastie ' ' indicates, in 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 21 

a word, his hypothesis of these remarkable phe- 
nomena. 

*'I would like, ladies and gentlemen,'' he 
said, *'to prove at the outset of this discussion 
that there is no supernormal any more than 
there is anything supernatural or unknowable. I 
would like to show you that the marvelous, 
mysterious, and contradictory appearances ob- 
servable in psychic phenomena come solely 
from our ignorance or our misunderstanding of 
the primal and essential laws of life. I wish to 
prove that normal physiology and so-called su- 
pernormal physiology are equally mysterious. 
They do not present two problems which de- 
mand two different solutions. There is one 
problem, one alone and identical, the problem 
of life itself.'' 

Nothing is more familiar than the function- 
ing of our organisms. Nothing seems more 
simple to the ordinary mind, and nevertheless 
nothing is more mysterious. Dr. Geley com- 
mented upon the hopeless and disconcerting 
failure of all scientific efforts to solve the prob- 
lem of the origin of life. He then stated the 
conclusions which he had drawn from his ex- 
periments. 

^^ Before our eyes," he declared, *'we have 
seen a single substance exuding from the body 
of the medium and we have seen that substance 



22 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

transforming itself into hands, faces and com- 
plete bodies, possessing all the attributes of 
life, of flesh and bone. Then we have seen 
these forms dissolve and reenter in an instant 
the body of the medium." 

Dr. Geley announced that his conclusion was, 
that there existed in these materialized organ- 
isms no actual muscular or nervous substance, 
but only one substance which assumed these 
forms. This substance, he declared, was the 
primordial substratum of all these temporary 
organisms. In normal physiology, he also de- 
clared, there is also but one substance. That 
this fact is less apparent in normal physiology 
Dr. Geley admitted. He asserted, however, that 
in certain cases there is proof that this fact is 
observable. In the protecting encasement of a 
chrysalis, an insect form exists, shut out from 
light and air. At a certain period in its devel- 
opment, this insect dissolves into a creamy 
primordial mass, precisely similar to the proto- 
plasm which exuded from the body of Madame 
Bisson's medium. Then this substance reor- 
ganizes itself into an entirely different entity. 

The analogy between the creative process of 
these materialized organisms and that of the 
insect in the chrysalis points, in Dr. Geley ^s 
opinion, to the conclusion that all living forms 
are essentially constructed from one single sub- 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 23 

stance. No valid difference can be maintained 
to exist between normal and so-called super- 
normal physiology. This was the first of the 
conclusions which Dr. Geley and Madame Bis- 
son drew from these experiments. 

In regard to the flat and incomplete organ- 
isms, Dr. Geley declared that he believed they 
were due to a defective organizing power. He 
compared them to incomplete forms occurring 
in antenatal organisms. *^As in normal physi- 
ology, so in physiology called supernormal, 
there are perfect and also aborted forms, mon- 
strosities, and so forth. The parallelism is com- 
plete.'' 

Dr. Geley considers that the sensitiveness 
shown simultaneously by the exuded substance 
and by the medium, prove that the substance is 
the medium herself partially exteriorized. The 
incident of the dematerialization of the body of 
a medium as recorded by M. Atsakoff, confirms 
this hypothesis. In all cases, even when forms 
have originally appeared without apparent con- 
tact with the medium, the observers have seen 
them dissolve and reenter her body. 

Two other conclusions of equal importance 
with the first were drawn by Dr. Geley. The 
second pertained to the directing force which 
formed these temporary organisms. What is 
this directing force? The term ** psycho- 



24 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

dynamism/' invented by Prof. Flournoy, indi- 
cated solely that there exists some force, which 
he concluded to be an emanation from the body 
of the medium. The term itself was only 
vaguely explanatory. Dr. Geley states only 
the necessity of admitting the existence of this 
superior dynamism, but insists that ^' this neces- 
sity arises from the sum of knowledge pos- 
sessed by man of all physiological processes. ' ' 

This accumulated knowledge has one univer- 
sally concordant significance, which is, that 
this force dwelling in a higher degree in the 
body of a medium, but actually existing in 
every living organism, is magnetic or elec- 
trical. 

In this connection, the experiments of Dr. 
Crawford, professor of Applied Science in the 
Universitjr of Belfast, present definite and illu- 
minating information. In his book, '^The 
Eeality of Psychic Phenomena," Dr. Crawford 
has stated that he perceived by touch an emis- 
sion of a thready substance from the body of a 
medium. The substance formed itself into a 
flexible rod and took the form of a cantilever 
which attached itself to the under surface of a 
table. In its flexible form it did not suffice to 
lift the table, but under the action of some in- 
visible force it became hard and stiff and then 
not only lifted the table, but could make sounds 



- •f-'VW 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 25 

as if from a sledge hammer. Dr. Crawford 
could not see this cantilever, which he called a 
psychic rod, but he was able to photograph it. 
The photographic plate showed also other rods, 
connecting the bodies of all the experimenters 
present with the body of the medium. Dr. 
Crawford concludes that these rods are stif- 
fened by a molecular force allied to electricity, 
and that this electricity or magnetism is con- 
tributed by all the living organisms present, giv- 
ing added power to the medium. 

Dr. Crawford ^s opinion is that the substance 
is supplied by the medium alone, while magnetic 
or electrical power is also supplied by the other 
human beings present. This magnetism is there- 
fore an agent in the stiffening of the psychic 
rods as well as an increment in the magnetic 
force employed by the medium. Electricity, 
then, seems to be the superior dynamism to 
which Dr. Geley refers, the implement by which 
the protoplasm is molded into forms. 

In his latest book, *^ Experiments in Psychi- 
cal Science, '* Dr. Crawford states that when, 
at his request, an increment of weight was 
placed upon the table by the unseen collabora- 
tors in his experiments, an important de- 
crease of weight in the medium was recorded on 
the weighing machine on which she was placed. 
Dr. Crawford declares that he believes this loss 



26 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

of weight in the medium was due to the extrac- 
tion of substance from her body. He also states 
that he discovered a material substance, viscid 
to the touch, which resembled the substance ex- 
uded from Madame Bisson's medium, on the 
under surface of the table, where his psychic 
rods had been attached. 

The experiments of Dr. Crawford are thus 
seen to agree in several important points with 
those of Madame Bisson and Dr. Geley, as well 
as to throw light on the origin in the bodies of 
the experimenters of at least a portion of the 
energy or superior dynamism employed in the 
formation of the materialized structures. 

The third and most important of Dr. Geley 's 
conclusions regarding the creation of these or- 
ganisms is that the directing dynamism must it- 
self obey something still higher. This higher 
controlling power is the idea, the thought, ini- 
tiating and creating, which conceives the form 
of these organisms. 

Here, then, is the last of the three elements 
in the formula of creation as observed in his ex- 
periments. First, the single primordial sub- 
stance; second, the magnetic dynamism; third, 
the creative idea. 

** Ladies and gentlemen," declared Dr. Geley, 
*^we have here a total reversal of material phys- 
iology. The living being can no longer consider 



LA CARAVANE PASSE «7 

himself a simple complex of cells; the living 
being is a product of psychic force molded by 
a creative idea. Thus, in spite of the many 
guesses at the origin of life which the idealistic 
philosophy of to-morrow will develop, the so- 
called materialistic theory of the universe is 
seen to be false." 

As to the idea which forms these materialized 
organisms, it is Madame Bisson's opinion that 
it does not originate in the active mind of the 
experimenters; rather, it is her belief, that it 
operates through their subconscious minds, 
obeying some exercise of superior intelligence. 

The coordination of the three elements in 
the formula of the creative process of these ma- 
terialized organisms is the great contribution 
which Dr. Geley has made to the new Psychic 
Science. Madame Bisson had reached the con- 
clusion that there was one original substance in 
matter. M. de Eochas, in experiments con- 
ducted with the utmost scientific accuracy, had 
proved the existence of a fluidic magnetic force 
in human organisms. Prof. Flournoy and Dr. 
Maxwell had added their conclusions as to the 
agency of a magnetic force in the formation of 
these organisms. Dr. Crawford's experiments 
add confirmation to the conclusions of Dr. Max- 
well and Flournoy. Altho Sir William Crookes, 
in his new classic record of his experiments in 



28 A (XOUD OF WITNESSES 

materialization, attested Ms belief in the reality 
of such phenomena, he made no attempt to ex- 
plain their creative process. The great Alfred 
Eussel Wallace also, altho actually observing 
the formation of these organisms, and in one 
case seeing the substance emerge from the body 
of a medium, failed also to form any definite 
theory as to the process of their creation. 

It remained for Dr. Geley to confirm the hypo- 
theses of his predecessors and by adding to the 
two elements already discovered the most im- 
portant element of all, * ^ controlling mind,'' to 
arrive at a formula which, in his opinion, makes 
a basis for the coordination of all physiological 
processes, nothing less than a new theory of the 
universe. No more difficult problem has surely 
ever been presented for scientific investigation 
than that of materiali^iation. 

The fact recorded by Sir William Crookes, 
that a lock of chestnut hair, cut from the head 
of Katie King, remained in all its unaltered 
brightness in his possession, adds a singular 
proof of her actual, altho temporary, existence 
in her materialized form. That molds of ma- 
terialized hands and feet, plunged voluntarily 
into bowls of melted paraffine, should be seen 
and preserved by many observers of the phe- 
nomena of materialization, provides added 
proof of their reality. 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 29 

The present writer has now the privilege of 
adding a suggestion to the all-important con- 
clusions of Dr. Geley. It is this: Ether, or a 
primordial substance, manipulated l:y means of 
a force allied to electricity, by controlling mind, 
is not only the creative process of these materi- 
alized organisms, but the creative formula of 
the other world. 

A year's experience of communication with 
the so-called dead has revealed to me nothing so 
satisfactory as this. 

*^ Ether manipulated mentally'* is the phrase 
which, through telepathic thought vibrations, 
has been given from unseen communicators to 
the remarkable medium whose powers have 
been exercised during the past year in my be- 
half. All truth is allied. Every fact and con- 
clusion deduced from the experiments of 
Madame Bisson, of Dr. Schrenck-Notzing and 
of Dr. Geley finds its illustration and amplifica- 
tion in the information given to her regarding 
the creative processes of the other world. In 
the visible world, we know, manual manipu- 
lation aids the creative process of all the objects 
which we see and use. In the other world, 
thought operates upon primordial substance 
independently. 

It is an astonishing fact that photographs of 
a similar process of thought manipulation have 



30 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

been taken and that the process itself has been 
many times observed by the eyes of living ex- 
perimenters. 

Thus, we have not only a new hypothesis of 
material life, but a formula of life eternal. 
Landscapes, so it has been stated, are evoked by 
this process from the ether which is itself an 
*^ efflux from Divinity.'' Temples of learning 
and of music are constructed by the masters 
who have perfected their powers of plastic im- 
agination through eons of experience. The arts 
and crafts are followed by those whose earthly 
tastes had adapted them to these pursuits. 
*'The musician has his music; the painter has 
his colors ; the athlete has his games," so I have 
been told. 

Nothing exists on earth which has not its 
counterpart in the other world. So spake Plo- 
tinus, so affirms the shade of Sir Oliver Lodge's 
son Eaymond, in testimony which, in the light 
of this new knowledge, no longer seems incredi- 
ble or absurd. Proof may fail us until we see 
and know these things by the light of heaven 
itself, but at least through the analogy of the 
seen process of materialization, with the de- 
scription of the ethereal process we may appre- 
hend the construction of the other world. 

One means of communication between both 
worlds we may also apprehend. The transfer- 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 31 

ence of thought messages by electrical vibra- 
tions through the ether to the nerve ganglia of 
the brain of a sensitive is the invariable state- 
ment given to me as one method of communica- 
tion from the unseen. ' ' The nerve ganglia, ' ' so 
it has been further stated, ^'are larger in the 
brain of a psychic than in ordinary brains.'' 
The sheath of the nerves is also thinner, due to 
some nervous history or inheritance. Thus sup- 
plied with larger and unusually exposed nerve 
wires, the brain of the psychic is prepared to 
receive the vibrations more rapidly than those 
of light, which bring thoughts and images from 
the unseen. Sir William Crookes, in a discourse 
delivered before the English Society for Psy- 
chical Research, in the year 1897, propounded 
the theory that these waves are similar in char- 
acter to those of the a;-ray. Then, in striking 
agreement with the information regarding the 
peculiar organization of the brain of the psychic 
as given to me, he observed : '^ A sensitive would 
be a man with ganglia of reception and trans- 
mission so developed or so exercised as to ren- 
der him peculiarly sensitive to the waves in 
question.'' 

The ouija board, in all probability, mag- 
netized by the human operators, is moved, 
sometimes by thought vibrations from their 
own subconscious minds and sometimes by in- 



32 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

visible communicators. So the tipping table 
moves often at the command of the subconscious 
vibrations from the living and sometimes at the 
authentic bidding of discarnate beings. 

The analogy of thought vibrations in the 
ether with the etheric waves of the wireless tele- 
graph is so striking that it cannot fail to per- 
suade the mind to an easy acceptance of the in- 
formation as to this means of communication 
between incarnate and discarnate minds. The 
similarity of nerve energy to electricity has 
been asserted by Herschel, who spoke of the 
brain as the ^* required electrial power for mus- 
cular motion." Faraday, altho declaring that 
he was not sure that nerve energy was solely 
electrical, still asserted his belief that this en- 
ergy was inorganic and might be allied to elec- 
tricity. 

Volta and Galvani long ago demonstrated the 
existence of electrical currents between regions 
of unequal physiological activity in living tis- 
sues. The characteristic electrical sensitivity 
in living tissues itself indicates that the chief 
means of controlling and correlating cell pro- 
cesses are electrical. Does this mean that liv- 
ing organisms are vitalized by this indwelling 
electricity, plus the element called mind or 
soul? 

This query suggests another bearing crucially 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 33 

upon the similarity of the creative process of 
the ethereal world, as given to me, with that of 
the materialized organisms observed by Dr. 
Geley. 75 the protoplasm exuded from the body 
of the living medium a modification or condensa- 
tion of the primordial substance of the uni- 
verse? And if so, is this the *^ mentally manip- 
ulated ether '^ of the unseen world? The latest 
discoveries of science assert that electrons form 
the basic stuff, the raw material, so to speak, 
out of which all objects known to man are com- 
posed. It is further stated that electrons are 
'^specks of modified ether.'' The term ^^ elec- 
tron'' was originally suggested for the unit of 
electrical energy. It was later applied to the 
ultra-atomic particles carrying charges of nega- 
tive electricity. The infinitely small particles 
into which atoms have been subdivided — ^the 
electrons — are thus seen to be not so truly 
** modified ether" as electrified ether, in other 
words, specks of matter, molded or reenforced 
by electricity. Here may we assume that we 
have precisely the two first elements of the cre- 
ative formula of the materialized organisms, as 
observed by Dr. Geley? The existence of the 
third element, ''controlling mind," in the crea- 
tive process of the ethereal world, is not difficult 
to postulate. 

In all probability, the difference between the 



34 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

*' thought sculpture'' observed in these mate- 
rialization phenomena and that employed by 
the inhabitants of the other world is that in the 
first the protoplasm is furnished by the living 
being, while that of the other world is a free and 
universally disseminated substance, in its abso- 
lute primordial form. 

In the light of the lately published experi- 
ments of Einstein, which seem to nullify pre- 
vious experiments, bearing upon the calculation 
of the velocity of light through the substance 
hitherto called *^ ether,'' and to indicate the pos- 
sible non-existence of the ether itself, we are 
compelled to revert to the certain presence of 
nebulous tracts in the heavens for our belief 
in the existence of forms of matter in the uni- 
verse in stages of progressive condensation. 
Ether, the noun of the Greek verb to undulate, 
is seen to be but a term, employed by Science 
for the medium through which light is trans- 
mitted. The material, existing at least in the 
spheres of the planetary bodies, may be pre- 
sumed to have a definite existence, and may be 
the malleable substance, employed by the dis- 
carnate entities, who without exception testify 
in transcendental communications that they do 
fashion the appurtenances of their world by the 
power of thought. As to the presence of mag- 
netism or an electric dynamism in the human 



LA CARAVANE PASSE 35 

frame, no possible doubt remains. The hy- 
potbesis of Sir William Crookes, as to the pe- 
culiar constitution of certain brains which 
adapts them to receive communications from 
the unseen, is illustrated in the case of the 
^ * sensitive ' ' who has transmitted a volume of 
veridical messages to me. She experiences 
what she describes as *^mild electric currents'' 
when these messages reach her exquisitely re- 
ceptive nerve ganglia. Thus by thought waves 
electrically borne we may have the strongest 
reason to believe that communication does ac- 
tually take place between both worlds. 

To the established facts of survival and com- 
munication we may now apprehend the means 
of that communication. "We may also imagine 
with what increased powers the liberated soul 
fashions for itself, through its inherited divin- 
ity an environment expressive of its ultimate 
possibilities of imagination. With what flood- 
ing increase of knowledge and of delight must 
it not contemplate those fields of Asphodel? 
Voyaging with the rapidity of light rays from 
earth to heaven, speaking that universal thought 
langniage, the ultimate Esperanto of human 
communication, it reads all the thoughts trans- 
mitted and recorded eternally upon the cir- 
cumambient ether. 

And at last, we of earth may apprehend 



36 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

through the slow increment of experimental 
knowledge that unity of force, unity of sub- 
stance, unity of origin in the one Supreme 
Mind, exists in our phase, as in all phases of 
life eternal. 

So we approach by scientific investigation 
the theories of metaphysics and of philosophy. 
So we confirm the revelations of ecstatic vision 
and the intuitions of those who have had 
glimpses of universal law. So thins the veil, so 
breaks the light eternal. 



CHAPTER n 
Mks. Veknon 

"A sensitive -would be a man with ganglia of reception 
and transmission peculiarly sensitive to thought waves." 
— Sir William Crookes. 

T N contributing the statement of my own con- 
-■- viction that communication is possible, un- 
der certain conditions and by certain methods, 
to the similar statements already published, I 
assume that it is pertinent to state the basis of 
that conviction and to relate the manner in 
which I reached it. 

Although refraining from a skeptical atti- 
tude regarding the many current anecdotes of 
ghostly appearances, of reported messages 
from the unseen through the physical media of 
the planchette, the ouija board and the mov- 
ing table, I had never seriously investigated 
them. I had never visited a clairvoyant; I 
had never read a book or an article on the sub- 
ject of Psychic Phenomena until the Spring of 
1918, when my sister was suddenly taken from 
this earthly life. In the agony of my grief, I 

37 



38 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

was led by the entirely voluntary agency of a 
friend to visit Mrs. Vernon of New York. This 
lady, who never accepts professional remunera- 
tion for the use of her remarkable powers, is 
only willing to employ them for the assistance 
of those in sorrow or for the pursuit of psychic 
research. 

A study of ten years, combined with per- 
sonal investigation and experiment, had con- 
vinced my friend that communication was pos- 
sible and knowing of Mrs. Vernon, through Dr. 
Elwood Worcester of Boston, he acted on the 
belief that I might be assisted in what was, 
at that time, a critical condition of health, by 
an interview with her. 

When I first visited Mrs. Vernon, less than 
a week after my sister's death, I was not in- 
troduced to her by the friend who had arranged 
the meeting. She had never seen me or any 
likeness of me; she knew no fact of my life; 
she did not know that a relative of mine had 
recently died. 

Unaware, as I was at that time, of any of the 
methods of communication, I was warned that 
I should avoid asking any question or making 
any remark which could furnish any informa- 
tion as to my Identity or that of any one living 
or dead connected with me. 

Although the messages received were defi- 



MRS. VERNON 39 

nitely characteristic of my parents and my 
sister, although information then given to me 
was in some important particulars quite new 
to me and evidential in a very high degree, I 
did not have the opportunity of verifying it 
until some weeks had passed. The verification, 
when it was obtained, was so complete, the con- 
ditions of my anonymity were so perfect, and 
the ignorance of Mrs. Vernon regarding my 
sister's death so undeniable, that I was led to 
continue my meetings with her. 

Since that week of April, 1918, I have seen 
Mrs. Vernon regularly and have written down 
with verbal accuracy the messages she has re- 
ceived for me. They are of such startling im- 
portance from the viewpoint of their evidence 
of survival and communication, as well as of 
information concerning the conditions of the 
other world, that I consider it my duty to give 
them to the public. 

Mrs. Vernon's mediumistic gifts consist in 
what is called clairvoyance and clairaudience. 
Not clairvoyance in its commonly accepted 
meaning of fortune telling, but the power of 
seeing with a clearness denied to ordinary hu- 
man beings, projected images, symbolic or de- 
scriptive, and sometimes what seem to be the 
actual forms and familiar gestures of surviv- 
ing personalities. Clairaudience is the allied 



40 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

power of hearing verbal messages. Without 
attempting a categorical statement that the 
method by which Mrs. Vernon is able to regis- 
ter these messages is indeed that of Sir William 
Crookes' hypothesis, it is possible to assert 
that there are many indications which point to 
the high probability that she has precisely the 
peculiarly constituted brain ganglia which give 
her this power. Owing to the illness of her 
mother, who only survived her birth by a few 
years, she was born with the peculiar nervous 
organization of the so-called psychic. 

Although evidence of clairvoyant powers was 
not lacking in her early youth, her normal en- 
joyment of life, for which she is eminently 
fitted, prevented any desire to use her gifts 
until some ten years ago. 

Conscious at last of the accuracy of the mes- 
sages she received and of the invaluable service 
she was fitted to render, through their use, to 
those in hopeless sorrow, she invited a rigorous 
medical examination by a distinguished neurol- 
ogist. The conclusion regarding her gift, as 
announced by the physician, was that it was ^ ' as 
natural to her as her speaking voice, and an 
endowment of undoubted importance, not to be 
questioned or decried.'' Emerging from the ex- 
amination with this invaluable indorsement, 
Mrs. Vernon applied herself to the practice and 



MRS. VERNON 41 

perfection of her gifts. Her success has justi- 
fied the patience whiqh she has expended, for 
now, like an accomplished musician, she knows 
her instrument. She can distinguish the mes- 
sages from beyond from the thoughts of her 
active brain with almost faultless accuracy. The 
result of this exquisite accuracy is to preserve 
the form of the messages in all their minutest 
details. Literary style, sometimes of a high 
order, characterizes many of the messages, and 
the precious bloom of personality is also pre- 
served with all its convincing charm. 

It is possible, in my opinion, to assert that 
in this accuracy Mrs. Vernon is preeminent 
among all sensitives endowed with similar gifts. 
Although capable of automatic writing, she 
finds her powers of clairaudience and clairvoy- 
ance more reliable. She never is entranced, 
nor does she ever lose a perfect consciousness 
of herself, or her keen interest in the use and 
demonstration of her powers. She sits in her 
charming house and patiently listens to the mes- 
sages, repeating them precisely as if she had 
received them from a telephone. Tact and can- 
dor, her native traits, are part of her equip- 
ment for that extraordinary service, never fail- 
ing her or those who benefit by her kindness. 
So, simply, and with no paraphernalia of mys- 
tery, the phenomenon of communication takes 



42 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

place before the enthralled spectator. Grati- 
tude is too poor a word to express the apprecia- 
tion of the benefits rendered by this truly dis- 
interested servant of those who mourn. 



CHAPTER III 

** Lovely and Beautiful in Their Lives, in 
Death They Weee Not Divided/' 

AN inherited incredulity regarding the pos- 
sibility of communication between the liv- 
ing and the dead lies deep within the minds of 
men. That incredulity is persistent, yielding 
neither to the reliably reported evidences of 
such communications nor to the hitherto pub- 
lished discoveries of Psychic Science. 

The subconscious reservoir holds ancestral 
denials, emotional refusals, which rise in floods 
to submerge the slowly growing edifice of be- 
lief. Personal experience, many times repeat- 
ed, alone leads to personal conviction. 

But in this slow process of conviction that 
communication does actually take place between 
the invisible and the visible world, no element 
is so effective as the recognition of the char- 
acteristic thoughts and modes of expression in 
the messages which seem to come to us from 

43 



44 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

the departed. This evidence is cmnulative in 
its convincing power and provides a potent 
solvent for the subconscious or emotional in- 
credulity. 

To communicate to the greatest possible ex- 
tent, the impression of dramatic verity in the 
messages which it has been my privilege to re- 
ceive from my sister and my parents, I will try 
briefly to describe their characters, their per- 
sonalities and their lives. 

*'She smiled and the shadows departed; 
She shone, and the snows were rain, 
And he who was frozen hearted 
Bloomed up into love again." 

— John Addvngton Symons, 

To describe my sister, of whom it has been 
said that she was the most regretted, in the 
places which knew her, of her generation, passes 
my powers, nor can I put on paper the radiant 
loveliness of her, whom just to meet in pass- 
ing, made the spectator think that life after aU 
must be good and happy. Such was the tes- 
timony of a stranger, such the influence of her 
presence, which, to all who had the joy of her 
affection, was a recompense for every iU. 

My sister and her twin brother were the 
latest bom of the children of her family. Her 
brother, by the fatal falling of a dead limb of 
a tree, died after a little more than two years 



"LOVELY AND BEAUTIFUL" 45 

of their infantile existence, passed almost lit- 
erally hand in hand. 

My sister, after a happy childhood in her 
country home, flowered at sixteen into a very 
remarkable beauty. With a well-nigh flawless 
sweetness of disposition, which had its source 
in a deep fountain of humanity, and a keen and 
vivid intelligence, she was the comrade of one 's 
dreams. Was there a word of appreciation to 
be uttered, she never failed to express it. In 
her sympathy, her method was rather to silence 
complaint and point the way to sunshine. Thus 
she built for happiness. She sat at the mart 
of joy, receiving and giving lavishly, from the 
early springtime of her life until, in uncon- 
sciousness, that life went out. 

Although between her, the youngest and my- 
self, the eldest, child there were separating 
years, a certain similarity of understanding, 
certain likenesses to our father made a spon- 
taneous sympathy which drew us together in 
a deep intimacy. 

Her clarity of thought was a natal gift, in- 
herited from our father, also her kindness and 
simplicity, which was never altered by a tinge 
of affectation through all the years when com- 
pliment and even adoration were offered to her 
like an incense. If a voice expresses person- 
ality, then hers, in its clear ringing timbre, 



46 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

expressed her courage and her unfailing opti- 
mism. If a laugh tells of sincerity or of af- 
fectation, then hers, gay and genuine as that 
of a child, told of unspoiled enjoyment and a 
fearless contentment with life. 

She was very tall, with a rounded slender- 
ness, and carried her head high and nobly, like 
our father. Eyes of clear hazel, under level 
brows, looked out with an always attentive, al- 
ways comprehending gaze. The rare modeling 
of feature which makes for beauty of a high 
order was hers, but her perfect mouth, with its 
exquisite smile, expressed her best. Beauty and 
charm like hers are opportunities for learning 
human nature, but the human nature which she 
saw was always lovable, not only because she 
drew forth love in abundance, but because she 
saw by preference only the best in men and 
women. Thus she rarely, if ever, encountered 
disappointment or suffered from a lack of sym- 
pathy or appreciation. 

Married the day after she had finished her 
school, she traveled widely and enjoyed the 
brilliant opportunities which were offered to 
her reigning beauty. To her children she was 
all of life. From their childhood it was their 
custom to wait patiently at her closed door 
for the earliest morning moment when, at the 
sound of the turning key, they would rush into 



"LOVELY AND BEAUTIFUL" 47 

her presence, feeling that the day could then^ 
hegin. 

Her life among people drew her to outdoor 
sports and to a never-ending series of per- 
sonal relations, offered to her in many places 
and at all times and seasons. Her beautiful, 
firm hands worked exquisitely in many kinds of 
needlework. She sympathized and participated 
in many charities and projects for civic bet- 
terment. She was an intelligent observer of 
politics and politicians. She loved poetry and 
romance in their literary expression, and she 
was her husband's ablest critic. But above all, 
she was a joy giver and her principal work 
was her own life of helpfulness, through joy. 
In her latter years, unconfessed personal char- 
ities have materially helped many whose testi- 
mony alone revealed what she had done for 
them. Thus, living until her forty-eighth year, 
in almost unaltered beauty, she never saw the 
twilight shadows of approaching age. To her 
latest hour, love and admiration were given to 
her, and in the "West, where, after a week's ill- 
ness, she passed from the sight of sun and flow- 
ers, flowers cover her grave by the unchanging 
sea; sunlight unchanging shines on sea and 
flowers. 

To me, who was so quickly led to hope that 
she could and did send messages of her con- 



48 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

tinued existence and her unchanging love, the 
chance that it might really be she who spoke 
was enough to lead to a full experiment of com- 
munication. Since that first desolate week after 
her departure, I now believe she has spoken 
with me in intimate mind to mind confessions, 
uncomprehended by Mrs. Vernon, of facts un- 
known to me. She has argued with me in her 
interpretation of traits of character in those 
known to us. She has given me test after test 
of her identity which conform to the strictest 
rules of evidence. Unhappily, many messages 
containing the most convincing proof of her 
identity are of too intimate a nature to be pub- 
lished, but much remains. Enough to show that 
she has also wished to speak with me. That 
suffices me, and would lead me on in my search 
for her, would sustain me even in the darkness 
of persistent doubt. *^We shall never be sepa- 
rated,^' she tells me; *^we are nearer in some 
ways than we ever should have been able to 
be on earth.'' I can confirm these words. I 
can say ^^I have not lost her," and so thinking, 
I can await the certainty of reunion. 

Our father had his part in the history of 
his country. His life which began in the east 
had its full development in the west, where 
as an active agent in the business and political 
growth of an important city he merited the re- 



"LOVELY AND BEAUTIFUL" 49 

spect of his fellow citizens and served as their 
elected representative in both houses of Con- 
gress. His equipment for this honorable and 
useful career was, first, marked clarity of 
thought; next great humanity towards all who 
were connected with him and a peculiar tender- 
ness to the poor and lowly and to children. 
A truly intrinsic taste, flowering unaided in the 
busy western city, led him to the perception of 
the simplicity of beauty and the beauty of sim- 
plicity. This expressed itself in a brevity of 
phrase, a remarkable electicism of language. 
Although surrounded by friends and relatives 
who accepted so-called evangelical religion in 
its Methodist form, he very early revolted from 
the faith which was so satisfying to them and 
assumed an attitude of doubt, of determined in- 
vestigation which he maintained until his death. 
His library, collected during the early years of 
his prosperity, contained all the translations of 
the books of the ancient religions which he was 
able to obtain. The irreducible minimum of 
ethical truth, it was his object to discover. 
This minimum, long pondered and finally re- 
duced to an individualized collection of briefly 
stated rules of conduct, he followed with a truly 
religious sincerity and constancy. Such was 
our father, whose personal appearance with his 
marked dignity of bearing, his tall, well-bal- 



50 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

anced frame, the statesman's head, the clear 
and steady eyes, well expressed his innate no- 
bility. 

Our mother, a descendant from ancestors who 
came with Winthrop to New England, was al- 
most perfectly typical of its colonial society. 
Growing up in the shadow of Williams Col- 
lege, she assimilated the intensest form of as- 
piration, both for religious and educational de- 
velopment. In a village community dominated, 
as in the early Plymouth days, by the influ- 
ence of the church, its social as well as civic 
center, religion w^as not only duty but delight. 
Although she rose at dawn to study her ** Vir- 
gil," by the winter candle light, her chief pleas- 
ure was in her church, where her deeply reli- 
gious and imaginative nature was exalted by the 
weekly services and particularly by the annual 
sessions of fasting and prayer, when services 
were daily held. In a letter to a sister she 
wrote, on one occasion, that ^^she had never 
enjoyed a more delightful season of refresh- 
ment. ' ' Her letters, preserved with her youth- 
ful journals, are written with an exquisite 
chirography, as delicate as her flower painting 
and her needlework. 

Equipped for her chosen occupation by 
studies in the classics, pursued in company with 
President Mark Hopkins' daughters, she first 



"LOVELY AND BEAUTIFUL" 51 

was a teacher in vine-covered Maplewood at 
Pittsfield, later in Kinderhook, and finally in 
the western city, where she soon met and mar- 
ried our father. 

The deepest earnestness in the practice of her 
religious duties, in solitary meditation, in the 
daily circle of family prayer, controlled and 
guided her during all her life. 

Fluent in speech and eloquent in prayer, she 
was known to be by those who joined with her 
in intimate circles of religious sympathy. Thus, 
religion, as she had conceived it in a Puritan 
village, dominated her inner and her outer life. 
But her love for her children, passionate and 
anxious, for five died in early youth, was an 
accompanying and equally controlling motive 
power. 

Gentle of speech, ardent in her affections, and 
possessed of a distinguished appearance, she 
had also a widely ranging imaginative faculty, 
a keen interest in history and public affairs, and 
a delightful humor. This humor it was her 
principle to suppress in the never relaxing 
effort to lead her children in the path her feet 
had trod. But the never idle imagination, the 
tender sympathies, broadened as the years went 
on, so that at last when she felt that her work 
was done she gave full expression to her play- 
fulness and her sense of comradeship. The 



52 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

once earnest instructor became a witty, gra- 
cious sympathizer in pursuits and aims, widely 
different from those which had been her life- 
long preoccupations. 

Only two years separated her from her hus- 
band and by only two years she survived him. 
Dying at eighty, both of them, on golden Sep- 
tember days, her one desire was to rejoin her 
husband on the anniversary of his death. Two 
days only past the year she lingered, and then, 
with a smile of farewell, radiantly confident, 
she slipped into the unseen. 

Clairvoyant vision was hers during her last 
months, and a singular emergence from the life- 
long opinions and forms of speech which had 
expressed her earthly incarnation and environ- 
ment — an evidence that while still lingering 
in her fragile body, her soul was already 
clothed in immortality. A confidence in an end- 
less life was the shining gift she left her chil- 
dren in the manner of her death. 



CHAPTER IV 

'*0n Eakth the Beoken Aecs — " 

T N transcribing the messages received for me 
-■• by Mrs. Vernon, I wish first to comment 
upon the fact that with almost perfect uniform- 
ity they bear indications of an origin external 
both to her and to myself. Telepathy from my- 
self is almost if not entirely absent. This may 
be due to my practice, followed after the first 
month, of asking definite questions which 
ehcited definite replies regarding matters of 
which I was necessarily ignorant. 

I should also refer again in this connection 
to my complete ignorance of the history of 
Psychic Science, of any of the recorded inves- 
tigations of the Societies of Psychical Eesearch, 
or of any of the literature of Psychic Phenom- 
ena at the time when I began my sittings vfith 
Mrs. Vernon. The experiments in materializa- 
tion, for instance, were entirely unknown to me 
until the summer of 1919. The information re- 
garding the construction of the ethereal world, 
which was received by Mrs. Vernon, was there- 
fore quite new to me and no suggestion from 

53 



54* A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

my own mind could have inflnenced Mrs. Ver- 
non, alike ignorant of these experiments, or of 
their illuminating significance regarding this 
unsolved and deeply mysterious subject. 

I assume no conviction on the part of my 
readers of the possibility of communication or 
of the facts of survival. But, to avoid the 
prolixity and repetitions of constantly recur- 
ring attempts to prove that these communica- 
tions are messages from those who purport to 
be speaking to us, I will proceed on the assump- 
tion that they are actual messages from beyond. 

The marked lucidity of my sister's mind, in- 
herited from our father and evidenced through- 
out her life, is shown in all her messages. The 
intense desire on her part and on mine to com- 
municate mth each other has apparently pro- 
vided a direct cable from her mind to mine. 

The first sitting was at Mrs. Vernon's house 
in New York on April the 11th, 1918, from four 
until half-past five in the afternoon. There 
were present Mrs. Vernon, the friend who had 
arranged the meeting and myself. 

Mrs. Vernon (looking at Mrs. de Koven) : 
*^ Health, somebody's health is in question. 
As you came into the room I felt greatly de- 
pressed, as if somebody's health was in ques- 
tion." 

(What was the matter?) 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 55 

**A limited amount of endurance, very lim- 
ited/' 

(That is right, I think; we tried to send out 
thoughts of assistance. Were they received?) 

** Certain barriers to be penetrated in order 
to get through. To protect something or some- 
body, some one tries hard to protect some one 
from something as if something threatened. 
The communicator is anxious about it. It is 
some one's health which is suffering as the re- 
sult of a certain action and the communicator 
wants to protect the person. F — a capital F — 
he seems to want to shake hands. He goes 
through the motions. It's just that. I hear 
the word ^ hands.' F, I hear again. Now I 
have that condition of discouragement again, 
just as it was when you first came in. Some- 
body holds a torch, as if to light the way to 
show which way to turn to some one who does 
not know. 

^^ Perplexity and confusion. They seem to 
wish to disclose, to show me something; it looks 
a little like a map or a patchwork quilt — fancy 
work — like a cover. Anyway, it's in pieces, 
they are telling me, not one big piece, but some- 
thing patched together." 

(What does the communicator wish to have 
done with it?) 

**Take it away from where it is now. You 



56 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

take it; you to have it; I want you to take it. 
It's a woman now; she made it and wants you 
to have if 

(Is it she who is suffering the perplexity 
which you spoke of?) 

Mrs. Vernon : ' ' Now I must listen very care- 
fully. She starts off with a sentence. ^ In pur- 
suit of spiritual advancement there is peace.' 
She told me to say that. She evidently gets her 
peace from that. The perplexity was earthly 
conditions — ^not there — she sees others in per- 
plexity on earth.'* 

(What person is she most anxious about?) 

*' Something surrounds a person she loved 
which does not satisfy her. She holds out a 
cornucopia — a horn of plenty, and separates 
some jewelry, little pieces to be distributed, in- 
terwoven pieces. She is trying to tell me some- 
thing identifying. It is just that — a horn of 
plenty, that is symbolical, which holds some- 
thing to be distributed. It was all together and 
she pours out the contents and distributes it, 
her personal possessions — different things for 
different ones, not of great value; one looks 
like a brooch in the shape of a knot ; she is pick- 
ing this out for you, I think. I see *M' — the 
capital letter ^M.' Did anybody's name begin 
with 'WV 

(No.) 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 57 

** There is somebody connected with her over 
there. She says : ^ The sitter must remember 
M.' It^s somebody else now, I hear Mother. 

*^She was insistent that I should keep at it 
with the name Mother, as if with parental au- 
thority. * Something was sudden.' She tries to 
demonstrate, to tell about somebody else. 
*Soon over, premature, before it should have 
been. ' They seem to be together. M. is trying 
to help put their communications over to me. 
She says: ^Somebody is awake at last.' F — 
they show me F. again, together with M. and it 
seems to be natural that M. should be in charge. 
I hear the word ^brooch.' It seems as if that 
were it. It's not exactly a trinket, * small, 
woven.' She evidently was fond of you and 
reaches out both her hands. She would like 
you to have these things that were closely asso- 
ciated with her — a piece of jewelry — some one 
thing that she wore, beside the patchwork that 
she made with her own hands and wants you to 
have also. She refers to * separation and re- 
union.' " 

(Oh! does she!) 

**I don't know whether she means previously, 
on earth, or now. ' ' 

(Will you ask if she felt assistance on 
Wednesday the 3rd and was better, and, if so, 
why the help was discontinued?) 



58 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

** When you asked that before, she said — * har- 
riers' and she says ^harriers' again, the ^dif- 
ficulties of being sure/ '' 

(I want to know if she felt that the help that 
came to her was from the thoughts of her dear 
ones. Was she conscious that we helped her?) 

*'It may take time to get an answer to that. 
She says: * Spasms of apparent response, ral- 
lies, frequently take place in the dying. They 
are simply the last flickers of a burnt-out taper 
which responds to the passing breath of a 
zephyr.' She shows me a taper that is burnt 
down, but if you blow it gently responds a little. 
She felt the force of your united efforts to 
restore her, but * remember this,' she says, 
*as undying as the fountain of youth is the 
force of sincere affection directed to her where 
she is now as on earth.' There is a certain 
buoyance and happiness in spite of separation. 
Time does not mean much to them. The spirit 
counts for more over there. They feel the be- 
reavement, but there is an uplift over there 
that we do not get over here. I will listen a 
minute about the trinket she wanted you to get. 
Something about it ^corresponds to something 
that you have. It corresponds to something or 
resembles something that somebody else has. 
There are two and it corresponds to another 
piece of jewelry. It's like a memento. Not so 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 59 

much for the value it would bear, but you would 
like to have it because she owned it.' I hear 
the word * cracked' — something is cracked. 
Again I get the impression that there is some 
one about whose health she is worried ; it is the 
health of someone she has left behind. * Dis- 
heartened.' " 

At the end of this first sitting I was intro- 
duced to Mrs. Vernon, who has since told me 
that such a rush of emotion, such strong vibra- 
tions of love filled her mind as I entered that 
she dared not look at me. 

The reference to *^ health" and the danger 
which threatened some one as a result of a cer- 
tain action, I think, concerned my husband who 
was, at that time, contemplating, unknown to 
me, an electric treatment for his persistent 
gout, which was applied a week later, with al- 
most fatal results. The ** perplexity and con- 
fusion" was a quite accurate perception, on the 
part of my sister regarding the condition of 
health which apparently was not subject to any 
improvement by medicine or otherwise. I did 
not, at the time of the sitting, realize, however, 
that it was my husband's health that concerned 
her, as I was ignorant not only of his intention 
to try electricity, but of any possible harm 
which might ensue therefrom. The capital let- 
ter *^F" conveyed no certain meaning to me 



60 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

at first, but as it appeared later, in connec- 
tion with our mother, I realized that it was 
our father who sent out a vision of greeting 
to me, and indicated that he and her mother 
were accompanying my sister. In subsequent 
sittings it is also by the signal of this capital 
**F" that he announces his presence. Her 
mother's reference to the sudden and prema- 
ture death of her youngest child is entirely 
characteristic, expressing also the value which 
is put on a full earthly experience, the regret, 
even in heaven, when it is cut short. The mes- 
sages descriptive of my sister's new condition, 
her new comprehension of that spiritual ad- 
vancement in which she should find peace, the 
long and beautiful sentence about the flickering 
taper, are very characteristic of the accuracy of 
Mrs. Vernon's method of transmission and of 
the symbolic form of many of the messages 
from beyond. 

In asking the question, if she had felt any 
assistance on Wednesday, two days before her 
death, I wished to know if indeed the improve- 
ment on that day was due to the agonized con- 
centration of thought and prayer which I and 
others had sent out to aid her. 

The most notable point in this first sitting is 
that of the description of the ** cover" of 
**fancy work." Of this I had no knowledge 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 61 

whatsoever. It was a large cover for my sis- 
ter's own dining table in . It 

was made of strips of linen and of lace, still *4n 
pieces/* as she stated, as it was unfinished. 
She had never made an article of this kind, hav- 
ing shortly before learned the Italian stitch, 
which finished the linen borders, from another 
sister. The table cover was in the West and I 
was in New York. Mrs. Vernon had never 
heard of my sister, did not know me or my 
name, knew nothing of the table cover. The 
proof of my sister's identity is as perfect as 
any proof could be. If the strained hypothesis 
is urged that some knowledge of this object 
existed on the earth plane which, by some en- 
tirely unexplained and unexplainable process 
could be transmitted to Mrs. Vernon, no hypoth- 
esis can account for the idea of its altered des- 
tination, for those who knew of it at my sister 's 
home, her sister and her daughter, definitely 
intended it for the latter, who meant to learn 
the stitch and finish it for herself. What more 
natural than that my sister should indicate the 
objects she wished me to have as souvenirs of 
her? The other object, very accurately de- 
scribed, was a brooch in the form of a bowknot, 
woven of small pearls. I knew of this bowknot 
naturally, as she often wore it, and recognized 
her meaning when she said that I had a brooch 



62 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

that resembled it. I have a jeweled bowknot, 
but did not know that she wished me to have 
hers, which was, in fact, left with all her other 
ornaments to her daughter. 

Aside from the comforting assurances of her 
happiness and of ultimate reunion, and of her 
companionship with our father and mother, 
there is^ in this first communication, absolutely 
evidential information unknown either to me or 
to Mrs. Vernon, and there is a prophecy fulfilled 
of a danger awaiting my husband totally unsus- 
pected by me. 

The first confirmation of the information 
about this table cover came from her friend, 
Mrs. Stillman, when she came to see me in New 
York about a fortnight after my sister's death. 
I asked her if she knew if my sister had been 
making a table cover. ^^Why, yes, indeed I 
do,'' she said, '^she spoke about it in the post- 
script of her last letter to me, written the day 
before she went to the hospital." In all prob- 
ability it was therefore the subject of the last 
sentence penned by her hand. 

In the second short sitting of the 18th of 
April, two important facts emerge; the first 
Mrs. Vernon's power of receiving messages 
through what in Psychic Science is called the 
" Pictographic Method" and the fact that my 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 68 

sister, during those first days, was often near 
me. 

Mrs. Vernon: ^'I hear a word which sounds 
like Braid, but now I see a water and a lawn 
with trees. It is a place and now I hear the 
word ^Rented.* The name now sounds like 
Brady, but I may not have the name correctly. 
She is looking at some rugs, Turkish rugs, and 
shakes her head; she says *they were offensive 
to her tenant.' 

**Now I see her pointing to some paper with a 
black border and she says ^No comparison.' 
Do you know what she means by that?" 

(I cannot think what she means.) 

^^She repeats it over and over *No compari- 
son; no comparison.' Now she says *I was 
there.' " 

My sister's place in the country was rented to 
a Mr. B who did in fact make some objec- 
tions to the furnishing of the house which she 
was not able to understand. The evocation of 
the place with its lawn and trees and its view 
of the lake was very accurate. The mention of 
the rugs was an evident attempt to furnish an 
identifying point to me. 

As to the black border on the writing paper, 
this was of course symbolical of mourning. 
The remark ^ ^ No comparison, ' ' which I did not 
at first remember or recognize in its proper 



64 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

connection, was instantly recalled, when she 
said ^'I was there.'' The evening previous to 
this meeting with Mrs. Vernon, I had gone with 
a friend to hear Dr. Jowett, when for the last 
time he spoke to his people at the Wednesday 
evening prayer meeting. On the way home in 
the motor I said to my friend, '^I lost my dear 
parents but they died in the fullness of their 
years and wished to go. That grief was no com- 
parison to this." 

If indeed the impression of that thought was 
recorded in my memory, the idea that my sister 
had been with me and had heard my words was 
no part of my then comprehension of the fre- 
quent presence with us of those whom we have 
thought and called ** departed. ' ' 



The 28th of April was Sunday, and in the 
morning I sat with Mrs. Vernon when soon my 
sister's thoughts were sent to me in a message 
which proved that she had received my own 
thoughts as they went out to her. 

Mrs. Vernon: ** Frankincense and myrrh 
wafted to me by zephyrs is the emanation of 
my sister's deep affection for me." 

Then immediately in a happy mood she re- 
called to me a golf match we had played to- 
gether in Aiken, describing the golf course, and 
referring to an unusual recollection on my part 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 65 

of a particular ground rule, which had enabled 
us to win the match. 

This unexpected turn in the contest she called 
a trick, a reference wholly incomprehensible to 
any one but myself. 

Mrs. Vernon: ^'She asks if you remember 
when you and she ^scrambled together over 
rocks and sand, and where there was also occa- 
sional water.' She speaks of a Hrick.' '^ 

Then followed a reference to a very pleasant 
function of each Spring and Autumn when she 
would show me the collection of hats she had 
made for the coming season. The sight of her 
lovely face in its various frames would have 
delighted a less affectionate spectator than my- 
self, who never discovered any hint of reserva- 
tion of a like appreciation of my house and 
furniture. 

Mrs* Vernon: *^I see her pointing to a pretty 
sailor hat and she is smiling. She says: ^You 
were always so sympathetic about my hats in 
which I was much interested, much more sym- 
pathetic than I was about your furniture. You 
have a different trend of mind from mine. I 
liked your house but I like to see things finished ; 
I could never go to the foundation of things 
or study their ethics as you do. I might have 
been more sympathetic about your more serious 
pursuits.' 



66 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

^^I hear N.E.D. Is there a Nedr' 

(Yes.) 

* * She says : * Ned was very complimentary and 
appreciative. ' 

This short statement has an evidential qual- 
ity. Ned is a relative who lives so far away 
that I rarely see him, yet I had seen him a day 
or two after my sister's last visit to me. At this 
time occurred an incident which aroused this 
complimentary and appreciative attitude and 
which was, in my conviction, due at this time 
only to this incident. When I saw him again, 
some six months later and asked him if he had 
spoken of it to my sister, he stated that he had 
and expressed great surprise that I should have 
been aware of their conversation. 

Mrs. Vernon : * ' I see her holding out a check 
book showing three blank checks and she holds 
up three fingers and says 'Transaction.' This 
refers to the necessity at this time of three 
checks being sent to pay for the memorial win- 
dow to her parents in the — — Church. 

*'I hear the word *Papa.' Is her father 
deadr' 

(Yes.) 

'*She says, * Papa's resentment,' and then 
with her hands she makes a gesture of blowing 
something from her lips. ' ' 

With this characteristic gesture, my sister 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 67 

told me that our father's long unhappiness due 
to a disagreement with a business associate 
had vanished in the other world. 

Like a ^^tall flower/' Mrs. Vernon said my 
beautiful sister appeared to her, at this delight- 
ful meeting, as she blew these charming 
thoughts from her lips and filled the room with 
her own atmosphere of lightness and of gayety. 

** A long interim,'' Mrs. Vernon heard in fare- 
well, like a sigh of lament over what must ap- 
parently be our long separation. 

The fourth sitting on May the 2nd was in the 
boudoir of my own house in New York. 

Mrs. Vernon: ^'I hear the word * ransack' and 
she shows me a box — not like a jewel box — it is 
larger. Now she is opening it and taking some- 
thing out of a flap, which looks like a paper. It 
can't be a letter because it is typewritten; I can 
see the letters through the paper. 

(I wrote to my sister with a typewriter.) 

**Ah! then, it is a letter and she says, *I en- 
joyed that letter very much indeed; I appre- 
ciated it.' 

This is a very evidential point for it told 
me that my sister had taken the last letter I 
had written her to the hospital in her letter 
case. 

When long months after her death I asked 



68 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

the old servant who had prepared her effects 
for that last journey if she had known what 
my sister had done with the last letter she had 
received from me, she said, ^*0h, yes, she told 
me that she was taking it with her, and would 
answer it as soon as she had recovered from 
the operation." 

'^Now I hear the word Tea over and over; 
what can it mean? Is it teacher or teaching? 
She will not go to anything else. (After a 
long pause of at least twenty minutes) Now 
she wants me to look at those roses on the table, 
and now she says ^They must be in full bloom 
now.' " 

The roses were tea roses in a vase, given to 
me by her, and standing on the table. What 
was the significance of this word ^ ' tea ' ' ; what 
that of the remark ^ ' they must be in full bloom 
now''? Only that she was in the room beside 
us, seeing the tea roses and thinking that in 
this month of May they were in full bloom in 

distant . No hint of the thought in 

her mind of the connection of the word ^^tea" 
with the roses dawned in Mrs. Vernon's mind 
for that long period of waiting; none was in 
mine. But finally her magnetic force, exerted 
after long delay, invincibly turned Mrs. Ver- 
non's head to the table and the roses. 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 69 

*^Tell her that I am with her a great deal — 
I have not left her, I will develop as she will 
develop, don't let me go; we shall never be 
separated.'' 

During all the days which had intervened 
since her death, and the fifth sitting which oc- 
curred on the 9th of May, I had constantly dic- 
tated to my grief the thought that it was well 
for her to leave life when she was still lovely 
and beloved. I had recalled her declaration 
made in the height of her youth and beauty that 
she did not wish to live after the best of life 
was over. These thoughts she had received and 
had prepared this elaborately constructed reply. 

Mrs. Vernon: *^I hear Turgenieff. I hear 
something like the passage or the flight of time ; 
she is making some sort of quotation from Tur- 
genieff, I think : 

** 'The years from twenty to fifty are the 
flowery years. Those after fifty, as I have 
often told you, seemed to me very dull and 
not worth living. I do not think so now. 
Women like you two may find the years after 
fifty just as blooming, if you have the staff of 
some occupation or interest. In this way 
you will avoid the deep grooves of the mind 
and will not acquire mental rust. You will 
still have magnetism.' " 



70 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

At this point I asked Mrs. Vernon to write 
these words. 

Mrs. Vernon: ^^Now they are dictating. *The 
years beyond fifty may retain the flowery as- 
pect of the period before from twenty on to 
fifty. Women like you two should find as much 
bloom in maturity as in youth due to the mental 
and spiritual staff provided by this philosophy. 
Interests of this kind prevent grooves and the 
decline of vigor which indicates rust.' '' 

At this point I asked Mrs. Vernon if she 
thought that my sister could hear me if I spoke. 
On her affirmative answer I said: 

(Dear, do you hear me? And do you know 
that the thought that you might develop more 
quickly on the other side has been my one con- 
solation?) 

**Tell Anna that as a direct answer to her 
thought I have tried to put through this com- 
munication. ' ' 

My next question was about my husband's 
health and her replies, characteristically humor- 
ous and playful, show how closely she had been 
watching him; how anxious she was to help. 

(How about Eeggie?) 

* ^ Reggie 's system has been renovated, house- 
cleaned; and there is no reason why, provided 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 71 

he follows wise and prudent methods, he should 
not be permanently alleviated/' 

(Are you busy; have you anything to do?) 

' ^ As yet my chief interest has been these peri- 
odical lapses into the human again, preventing 
the despair of absolute inscrutable separation. 
Later on my induction into spiritual life will 
begin, but the solace administered by the cour- 
teous and patient efforts of you two to trans- 
late my messages has assuaged my grief ten- 
fold/' (Again reverting to my husband) ^^Im- 
portune Reggie, divert his attention from 
cracked ice. Try a substitute.'' 

*^She is showing me bottles of mineral water 
and I see her squeezing the juice of a lime into 
a glass. She says to use ^the sharpest kind 
of mineral water. He will say it is a poor 
drink but wholesome. His feet protruded but 
now they are on the floor. Reiterate the fact 
that calmness will help his complaint. The 
difficulty is not fatal or serious but might be- 
come so if not mitigated.' " Accompanying this 
was a medical diagnosis of one symptom of my 
husband's condition, quite accurate, as was the 
perception of its 'cause. The reference to his 
feet being at last on the floor was also accu- 
rately perceived, as only the day previous to 
this sitting had he been able to walk. 

The reference to the solace administered to 



72 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

her by her communications with us, was the 
first of many expressive of the same gratitude. 

On May 12th, in my boudoir there was evi- 
dence for the first time of the presence of the 
group of discarnate members of the English 
Society for Psychic Research, which is directed, 
in their control of communications from the un- 
seen, by the famous Imperator of Mrs. Piper's 
demonstrations. 

In this connection it is pertinent to refer to 
the fact that a personality also appearing under 
the name of Imperator communicated the very 
important messages by automatic handwriting 
and otherwise to the Rev. Stainton Moses, 
who under the pseudonym of M. A. Oxon, pub- 
lished them in a famous book called "Spirit 
Teachings." Much confusion in the minds of 
the students of Psychic Phenomena has arisen 
in regard to the identity of Imperator. His 
real name, as borne on earth, and given to 
Stainton Moses, was not confirmed in the lat- 
ter 's communications after death. A state- 
ment of my sister indicates that Imperator 
is a title such as Judge or Doctor, which is used 
by the ancient masters in the other world who 
control or guide the communications between 
that world and ours. 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 73 

^^Imperator dictates. Specified communica- 
tors provide the subjects. 

*^ Mother appears, she shows a sort of cold 
frame, such as covers flowers, and appears to 
lift it as if to disclose the flowers beneath. She 
uses the word ^Reticence' which she says kept 
her children from completely understanding 
her. She says also that this Reticence has 
passed.'' 

(Our mother came of Puritan ancestors and 
felt that it was wrong to praise her children 
overmuch.) 

**I was not so much of a Puritan but that I 
could attend to having good food and look after 
the wants of others.'' 

This avowal was surprising to me, in view 
of her entire lack of enjoyment in the pleasures 
of the table, and her omission to mention any 
particular intention of ministering to that en- 
joyment in others. No want was ever neglected 
in her household, but a confirmation of her 
statement, subsequently to this meeting with 
Mrs. Vernon, was found among some family let- 
ters, in many little blank books, containing 
cooking recipes and carefully preserved in her 
own delicate handwriting. 

^^ Cousin John is with me." 

This Cousin John was a very distant relative, 
characteristically sought by our mother, who 



74 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

was always most careful to preserve all family 
connections. 

I then asked her why she had not told her 
family about the Nathan Dexter document. 

**I had a certain parental hesitation to dis- 
close the primitive or elemental conditions con- 
cerning his life and occupations. This was not 
exactly snobbish as we were nearer those con- 
ditions than you are now. People feel differ- 
ently about those things. It was stupid and 
unnecessary.'' 

I then brought into the room a photograph 
of her house in South Williamstown and put it 
before Mrs. Vernon, asking the question. 

(Did grandfather buy this house or did he 
build it?) 

^*He converted to our use the sturdy relic of 
a predecessor." 

Mrs. Vernon (after a long pause) : **She is 
making me look at the window at the back over 
the kitchen." 

(This means that the little addition was the 
kitchen, a fact that I did not know.) 

*^She says: *That was the window' — and she 
says it many times. Now she is showing me a 
letter or letters thrown against the window. 
I can't imagine what she can mean." 

It was quite plain to me, finally, for I under- 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 76 

stood that this must be the window of her old 
bedroom where, on the first day of her occu- 
pation of it, she had written with a ring upon 

the glass, **In this room M E S 

passed many happy hours/' The premature 
declaration had always amused her sisters, and 
the little incident had been repeated by her to 
her family as many as forty years ago. 

I append the Nathan Dexter document, an in- 
teresting patriotic declaration of a soldier in 
the Revolution, discovered long after her death, 
among the family papers. I have no means of 
knowing what this ancestor's *^ elemental occu- 
pation'' might have been. I find in it, however, 
an unconscious literary quality and a fluency 
of language, the source, in all probability, of a 
like fluency in her gracious speech. 

At Lanesboro, Mass. September the 19th, 
1843. 

' * This short narrative is wrote at the request 
of my great granddaughter M. — E — S — and 
I am the sixth generation from Gregory Dexter 
who came from England and settled in Provi- 
dence in Rhode Island in 1643. I was born in 
Smithfield in Rhode Island on July the 22nd, 
1759. And when at the age of sixteen I slung 
my pack and shouldered my loaded gun in the 
defense of my dear country which was infested 



76 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

by a cruel and destructive inimy for seven 
years. When at the word of God and the 
Swoard of Washington they were made captive 
and drove back to their Infernal Den. I from 
my youth have stood firm in the shoes Democ- 
racy and may God bless my dear country with 
peace prosperity and happiness until time shall 
be no more. 

*^The above lines wrote by the aged infirm 
and trembling hand of Nathan Dexter in my 
eighty fifth year. ' ' 

At the seventh sitting on the 15th of May, a 
friend, Mrs. Horton who quite unexpectedly 
then exhibited a psychic power of a very distinct 
order, accompanied me. My sister came at once, 
with, to me, a heartbreaking reference to our 
golf playing on the links at and an ex- 
pression of regret, the only one in all her com- 
munications but deeply poignant, for the lost 
summers of our constant companionship. 

Mrs. Vernon heard: ^^ Flowers near a stream 
in the country — far away, Indian name. ' ' 

(This must be the golf links in our old home.) 

^'This pleasant summer weather makes me 
think of it.'' 

Suddenly at this point, a new presence made 
itself felt overwhelmingly, the husband of Mrs. 
Horton, who received messages and visions 
which completed and confirmed those received 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 77 

by Mrs. Vernon. It was very curious to ob- 
serve this double registering of thought waves. 
One saw a vision of a club lawn, the other the 
vision of some one playing a game ; the evoca- 
tion of an identifying vision of a ball game on 
fete days, in the old home of Mrs. Horton and 
her husband. The electric currents which Mrs. 
Vernon describes were experienced by my 
friend with great intensity, giving a very clear 
example and confirmation of the electrical wave 
method of thought communication. 

On the morning of the 20th of May, I had, in 
a telephone conversation with a friend, re- 
marked that it would be most interesting if 
we could hear from a mutual friend of ours, who 
had died a few years ago. Between the hour 
of this conversation and eleven, when Mrs. Ver- 
non came to my house for the eighth sitting, 
Mrs. Horton, who had been present at the sev- 
enth sitting, entered my room saying, '^I have 
a feeling that you will hear from a new person 
this morning and that you will be very much 
pleased and interested." 

When Mrs. Vernon arrived she observed that 
it was sometimes difficult to demonstrate for 
men, that they were apt to dictate the conduct 
of the sittings and that there were certain ' ' mas- 



78 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

culine inhibitions ' ' which were difficult to over- 
come. 

The first word she heard when she applied 
herseK to ^^ listen" was the last name of the 
friend, of whom I had spoken that morning on 
the telephone and whom she had never known 
or ever seen. 

Mrs. Vernon: ^^I hear the name S . Don^t 

tell me the first name. Now, I hear the capital 
letter — (mentioning the initial of the friend's 
Christian name.) Now, I have the impression 
of laughter and gayety, of a very brilliant 
sparkling personality and she says, 

^* *I am laughing at the unsatisfactory condi- 
tions down there. I used to laugh in a sort of 
cynical way ; I still laugh, but not in exactly the 
same way. I have expanded.' " 

(We have missed you so much.) 

**I really believe they did. I was usually the 
instigator of the fun and nonsense. It is just 
as much of a comfort to talk to Mrs. de Koven 
as it always was. I have wanted to come be- 
fore, but have kept off because I felt that her 
sister needed her." 

(Have you seen my sister!) 

<^Why, of course, she is here. She is as 
beautiful as ever. I always admired her but 
preferred Anna 's dignified charm. " (I) 

(What is my sister doing?) 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 79 

'*She is aiding in the transportation of mes- 
sages and exchanging ideas with those who 
perform this service over here.'' 

(Can you give ns a test?) 

'*My vegetable garden has been enlarged, en- 
croached. ' ' 

This refers, as I have since been informed, 
to certain improvements in her place in the 
country. 

(Have you a message for ? the friend 

with whom I have talked over the telephone.) 

^^Tell my old friend that I am so thankful to 
see that she is so much better. Well done! 
Fine! so pleased.'' 

(What about her brother!) 

**He is surrounded with a jumble of papers." 

This was correct, as I was later informed, as 
this brother had lately begun to write for the 
newspapers. 

^^I was amused when I heard you speak of 
masculine inhibitions. Your sister has been 
very patient this morning; my only excuse is 
that you called me. ' ' 

(Tell my sister that there is not one moment 
when I am not thinking of her.) 

^* Perennial a:ffection like my sister's lights 
the way through eternity. ' ' 

Mrs. Vernon: '^She is thanking me for my 
* patience and courtesy.' 



80 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

''Some day you yourselves will know what 
this has meant to me. — Mamma is much softer 
with me than she was and not quite so firm with 
me. I do not want yet to see much of Cousin 
John. They tell me I will in time. (She seems 
very humble and gentle.) I find him uncon- 
genial. There are so many others here. It 
does not make any difference if he was related 
to me on earth. I have no resentment. I just 
don't want to see him yet. I am so glad that 
Eeggie is doing better. I saw him laugh at 
the ^cracked ice.' Eeggie with his charm is 
more congenial to me than Cousin John. (She 
laughs.) Why should I be with Cousin John? 
I would rather be around here and do whatever 
good I can, so they let me. I have not reached 
the holy stage where I can agree to seeing 
Cousin John. Mamma is still struggling with 
me spiritually, she will win out in time. I see 
Mrs. Vernon has to go (she waves good-bye) 
I shall always be on hand at the sittings even 
though I do not always communicate.'' 

The impression of dramatic verity in these 
communications from my friends, was exceed- 
ingly strong, and would be to all who have 
known them. The instant response to my 

thoughts of Mrs. which brought her to me, 

as if by a telegram, was most surprising to me, 
with my then total ignorance of the rapidity 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 81 

and certainty with which thought messages are 
carried. 

It is also interesting to note, that Mrs. S 

heard Mrs. Vernon's remark about *' masculine 
inhibitions'' as my sister had heard my hus- 
band laugh when I repeated to him her tactful 
warning against ^^ cracked ice," indicating that 
he should avoid the beverages forbidden by his 
physician. 

On May the 24th, the statement in the sixth 
sitting that Imperator and his group were con- 
trolling Mrs. Vernon's communications was 
confirmed. In the group of those members of 
the English and American societies for Psychic 
Eesearch who apparently immediately recog- 
nized the determination on the part of myself 
and my friend to communicate and had there- 
fore assisted her, are Mr. Myers, Dr. Hodgson, 
Mr. Pelham, and Edwin Friend. 

Mr. Friend was in the act of carrying records 
of Mrs. Vernon's 'communications to the Eng- 
lish Society when he was lost with the Lusi- 
tania. He had therefore known Mrs. Vernon in 
life, and is often the spokesman of this group. 
Mrs. Vernon states that since his interest in 
these matters has beenprosecuted from the other 
side, she recognizes his control of the com- 
munications which she receives and the com- 



82 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

municators who approach her. He has made 
himself her guardian, perfectly protecting her 
from intrusion by the strange and mischievous 
personalities who often attempt to disturb and 
arrest the communications of other psychics. 

Mrs. Vernon heard my sister : * * The contribu- 
tion of the family collectively to the war tax 
represents a fine memorial to Papa. Earthly 
achievements indicating conscientious and up- 
right effort teach us over here even after our 
passing through the medium of telepathic com- 
munication. Papa's upright efforts there di- 
rect toward him a great many appreciative 
thoughts which reach and affect him here. 
Thought is a power, more so over here than 
with you. I am touching a little upon this phi- 
losophy because I know my sister's mind." 

(Does she know my thoughts?) 

** Absolutely whenever I choose. (Resum- 
ing her previous subject.) Those thoughts do 
not pander to egotism ; not in this connection do 
we value them, but they contribute to and up- 
hold the value of integrity. ... It is difficult 
to describe how the viewpoint changes over 
here. We have a different idea of proportions. 
In the company of benign spirits, the object 
seems to be individual development — (I should 
say in this company) — the obliteration of sel- 
fish and egotistical desires, and above all an 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" SS 

almost divine toleration of human weaknesses. 
I am learning or trying to learn these things. 
When the curtain goes down on a play one 
does not disturb oneself about what goes on 
behind the scenes. As far as I am concerned 
the curtain is down, my little play is over. 
Anna thought that I played the star role, and 
I must say that I regret not being able to finish 
my career, but I am learning with your ( !) 
help to give spirituality its proper weight. Our 
sister must of necessity in the near future read 
and think a great deal, and I would like to in- 
terest her more in this phase of existence as it 
is like a sturdy raft to a shipwrecked mariner. 
I can almost hear them, saying that she must be 
changed to be like that, but this is a reflection 
from those who are teaching me. This is what 
I am being taught, I still have a good many 
human traits, an abiding detestation of funere- 
ally religious people. Over here there is none 
of it. Not a bit of it — ^not in the particular 
group with which I have been associated. 
There is merriment and happiness and light- 
heartedness with the greatest possible degree 
of spirituality. All spirits are not like that ; I 
am in contact with a group of very high devel- 
opment. ' ' 

(Do you sleep and what do you do?) 

*^We divide time between consultations as 



84 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

to the best methods of communication and re- 
joicing over satisfactory results. And what we 
call charitable incursions to other planes to up- 
lift and console despairing and lonely souls. 
This group which has control of these veridical 
communications is a very ancient one, and 
therefore only privileged newcomers are al- 
lowed to enter it. There is no taint of dishon- 
esty, of a desire to pose, of material gratifica- 
tion. Also no intellectual inhibitions in the 
group around me. This group of controls is 
a wonderful group. It is the Imperator group, 
and it has been supplemented by such a man 
as Frederick Myers and Edwin Friend whose 
youthful vigor of mind has inveighed against 
untoward influences.'' 

Mrs. Vernon heard Frederick Myers : * ^ Mrs. 
de Koven's sister seems to have grasped the 
meaning of affairs, with unusual lucidity. Has 
resigned herself to conditions and is con- 
forming herself in every possible way to 
methods which will enhance her spiritual de- 
velopment. With amazing lucidity she has 
grasped the conditions. Most people who come 
over suddenly would say ' I will still try to exert 
my influence, I will not leave the earth.' That 
would be human. Not she — ^her intellectuality 
has grasped that it would be a waste of time to 
attempt it." 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 85 

Mrs. Vernon remarks that it may be egotistic 
but that she thinks that this opportunity to 
communicate has helped her. 

Frederick Myers : ^^It is not egotistic; there 
is no doubt but that you have helped her very 
much. ' ' 

The first message in this sitting regarding 
the ** collective contribution of the family to 
the war tax'' has a high evidential significance. 
Unkno^vn to me the directors in the Chicago 
Company in which I am a stockholder had pur- 
chased, just before this sitting, a large number 
of Liberty Bonds. My first knowledge of this 
came from my sister. 

At the tenth sitting, on the 28th of May, my 
sister conversed with me in a language of such 
deep intimacy, that it not only removed my last 
lingering subconscious doubt but convinced a 
number to whom I read this record and who 
had known her well, of the possibility of com- 
munication. In this interview, she discussed 
certain traits of character in those connected 
with us, and disagreed with me in her conclu- 
sions, finally convincing me by references to 
incidents which proved her argument. Mrs. 
Vernon knew nothing of the persons discussed 
nor did she understand the significance of my 
sister's words. Unfortunately it is only possi- 



86 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ble to relate tMs incident, without giving the 
details. The fact in regard to which all testi- 
mony agrees that personality is at first com- 
pletely unchanged, was very clearly shown. 

Mrs. Vernon: **C excels in motherly 

duties and approves — ^I have not mentioned the 
others. I have concerned myself in proving 
my existence to you. Tell Nan that I have a 
little idea of Mame's disapprobation of me. I 
was not spiritual, I wielded a great power, and 
it was a temptation to use it. Mamma did not 
understand me, as she never held the power 
that I had ; it would not have been human not to 
use it. She was not beautiful as I was. I am 
simply stating facts. It isn't egotistical now 
that I am gone. I am simply talking it over 
with you and Anna. This is also characteristic 
of me.'' 

(Do you remember that during our long inti- 
macy I have made two remarks that were cal- 
culated to hurt you? And do you know how 
much I regret them?) 

*^But yet it was a perfectly correct statement. 
I grew to think so many years ago. In both 
cases Nan was right. Her influence directed 
me in the decision which — I took. I never ad- 
mitted it, but it was so." 

(Does she know my love for her; how I think 
of her every moment?) 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 8T 

* * Emanations from that affection have upheld 
and comforted me through what would other- 
wise have been a period of anguish.'^ 

(Was not the intimacy between us always 
very deep and satisfying?) 

^^Two blossoms on the same stalk may vary; 
we did not ; we were like twin roses on the same 
stem; we were so in accord; if the wind blew 
roughly over me she felt it. ' ' 

In my sister's statement that she had ^^many 
years ago ' ' grown to agree with the first of the 
remarks I had made to her, was so expressed 
that it was perfectly certain that she knew what 
the remark was to which I had referred, and 
this admission was the first knowledge that I 
have ever had of that agreement. The remark 
was made over twenty-five years ago and never 
referred to but once between us. Her refer- 
ence to the second time when I had wounded 
her did not concern the remark I had in mind 
when I asked the question. It did refer to an 
incident made perfectly clear in her expression, 
and her statement contained information quite 
new to me. Mrs. Vernon has never had any 
idea of the significance of the conversation. 

The first message in this communication re- 
ferred to a member of her family who was, soon 
after her death, taking care of the younger chil- 
dren. The approbation of a certain course of 



88 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

proceeding of which she had known was cor- 
rectly stated, as was the care of the children. 
In this case, as in many others, it is she who 
has first informed me of the thoughts and oc- 
cupations of members of our family who are 
distant from me. 

At the sitting of the 4th of June my sister's 
deep depression over the unhappiness of those 
she had left behind was very evident. 

Mrs. Vernon: *^I am very unhappy over the 
children. They are so unhappy — somebody cry- 
ing on a little tear-stained pillow. The con- 
dition is so unhappy, I have to express it. So 
much unhappiness in my family, I cannot help 
but be weighed down by it. Hardly equal to a 
test." 

(Tell me if your twin brother has grown up?) 

^'He presents a radiant aura, he defends me 
from impertinent spirits, he paraphrases my 
thoughts for me ; it is all so different here and 
experience counts for a great deal. He is in 
loving attendance on me now. In a way we are 
really very happy, because it is so peaceful. 
No social amenities to speak of; no social ene- 
mies at all. One's development determines one's 
surroundings, and the only snobs ( !) are those 
who dislike spiritual regulations. They thrust 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 89 

their egotistical auras before them and are 
easily eluded." 

(Is it like the world at all; are there hills and 
streams?) 

^^ Every physical and material manifestation 
is plainly discernible from here, inviting those 
whose choice leads them to hills and streams to 
indulge it. There are symbols of hills and 
streams. It is a world of symbols, very difficult 
to describe to the material mind. The psychic 
symbol is the nearest approach to it of any- 
thing the human imagination is capable of. 
Remember it is the life of the soul, and there- 
fore intangible, but nevertheless exquisitely 
lucid, not indistinct, one might almost say lurid. 
Therefore it is advisable to be very careful 
what symbols you choose. Undeveloped souls 
are transported by symbols of wine glasses and 
material gratifications. They derive an almost 
material gratification from these. More devel- 
oped inhabitants here prefer to dwell upon 
mental pictures of an uplifting character, the 
glory of spirituality pervading the universe, 
with beneficence in which they bask. ' ' 

(Is there a special locality to which they re- 
turn?) 

^^We do inhabit the ether, we are ethereal 
beings, we can preside at the conjunction of sun, 
moon and stars if we choose. The earth at- 



90 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

tracts most of those in my realm because we all 
have loved ones there, but more ancient souls 
prefer the Hebrides, Pleiades, Hesperides.'' 

(Are you happy?) 

*^We float in the ether/' 

(Can that be a happy condition?) 

*^It is a superlatively happy condition to 
those who have found their souls, not surely for 
the materialists." 

(Is there a spiritual body?) 

*^ We can assume at will the semblance of our- 
selves. Mrs. S told you that because she 

knew it would please you she remembered how 
proud you were of my looks. Seeing the im- 
portance of spiritual development over here, 
we marvel at the neglect of it over there. The 
intelligent ones recognize it and attempt at 
once to develop. The stupid ones hang on to 
the earthly symbols." 

(Do you know what Summerland is which 
Eaymond speaks of?) 

*^Do you remember one day when we were on 
the lawn, and the children were playing, and 
when we had no idea of anything in the future 
but happiness ? It is like that. It is like youth 
and childhood, and the faith in a happy future. 
I have seen a place like that — ^but as yet it 
seems empty. When whole families come over, 
when they are all united, there are aU sorts of 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 91 

pleasant conditions. The air is filled with a sort 
of happy expectancy. I am not ready for it 
yet.'' 

(Will you be happier when I come?) 

*^0h my! yes, that would mean companion- 
ship, the uplift of affection, the tie of associa- 
tion, the assuaging of the grief of separation. 
Mamma is still severely pursuing spirituality; 
Anna and I would pursue it with a little bit of 
humor. She is good as gold, chastened and 
everything which is pure and highly developed. 
Papa beamed a welcome, and held out hands as 
if to support; has supported me much more 
than Mamma, a perfect rock.'' 

(Did Papa like the book I wrote after he 
died?) 

Instantly Mrs. Vernon perceived my father's 
presence and heard : 

F: '^1 always said that Anna The book 

made its impression there but other achieve- 
ments have made their impression over here. ' ' 

(Do you like my house?) 

^*A beautiful structure, filled with many 
beautiful things, a tribute to her taste. Tell 
Anna that I consider that in the game of life 
she has scored well and that her great affection 
for her sister has been one of her greatest com- 
forts over here." 

(Can you tell us about the war?) 



92 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

^* Around Toul lies the solution. Britannia 
may rule the ocean, America will rule the land. 
Not dominions, but Americans high principles 
in this war will make her a power greater than 
she was before. Otherwise criss cross (hands 
moving back and forth) . The Americans should 
not get all the credit, the others have borne 
the brunt. It should be a hand shake all 
around. Persistency wins and Heaven knows 
we are all persistent enough.'^ 

The date of this communication was the 4th 
of June, 1918, before any advance of the Amer- 
ican forces. The reference to the concentra- 
tion of Americans at Toul is notable as well as 
the statement of his intense interest in the 
progress of the war and the apparent coopera- 
tion with the efforts of his countrymen. 

A month elapsed between the eleventh sitting 
and the twelfth when I saw Mrs. Yernon at the 
Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, first in the morn- 
ing and again in the afternoon of the 6th of 
July. 

Mrs. Vernon heard my sister: *^The compen- 
sation was great for my lack, for whatever was 
lacking in my life I had a compensation in the 
affection which Anna gave me. She was like 
a rock. I could always know that she was there. 
(Shows an image of a swimmer.) But although 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 98 

I sometimes floundered I always came back to 
her and rested my feet upon this rock. She 
knew that it was not so much that I swam away, 
bnt there were currents and eddies which en- 
ticed me and so I floundered about, but after 
a while I came back. 

^'Even after my passing her interest in this 
provides the rock for me to stand on. (Shows 
a picture of a lovely wide and sunlit beach.) 
There were other bathers who called me and I 
enjoyed myself for a while, but I tired of it 
finally and came back. The frivolity of it en- 
ticed me and I indulged myself in it, but she 
was always there, as firmly established as 
ever.'^ 

(Does mother see her children who died long 
ago?) 

^^ Difficult to describe conditions. Children 
who die like that are in a different realm. One 
can visit it; you can see them. (Points a long 
way off.) They have not been compelled to 
strip themselves of earthly guile. You must 
strip yourself of earthly attributes to spend 
much time with them. Mamma can, as she had 
fewer earthly attributes. I can sometimes, but 
as yet I have been occupied with communica- 
tion. I have not spent as much time with 
Mamma as you would have thought. Mamma 
gravitates between the children's realm and me, 



94 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

She is a sort of derrick. I must say that she 
has been a wonderful help. But she is not as 
much interested in these transcendental com- 
munications as I am.'' 

(Do you see Dr. Hodgson, George Pelham 
and the others of the Psychical Ee search 
group?) 

**Yes, indeed, I see that group. They allow 
me to spend all the time with them. ' ' 

(Do you know that I do nothing but read 
about the subject?) 

**Yes, I have seen her. Anna's interest is 
wonderful and she has a great place to fill in 
spreading this knowledge. Her interest does 
not surprise me. To paraphrase the old ex- 
pression ^Handsome is as handsome does.' 
Anna does as Anna is. ' ' 

(Did you speak to me in the Library?) 

**I did my very best; hers is a peculiar phase 
and I had to use an entirely different set of 
vibrations. ' ' 

-This refers to a message given me by an offi- 
cial of the Public Library in Boston, who had 
often occupied herself in searching references 
for me. This official has certain mediumistic 
powers and did apparently get a message from 
my sister, who told her that she was very near 
me. She heard my name repeated many times 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 95 

and finally asked me if this was my Christian 
name. 

In the afternoon I asked two questions which 
our sister had wished me to send through Mrs. 
Vernon to the mother of a friend. This mother 
has been dead for a number of years. The ques- 
tions were unintelligible to my sister, to Mrs. 
Vernon and to me. The original propounder 
of these questions was also unknown to Mrs. 
Vernon and to me, and she was in California. 
I had no hope that any replies could be ob- 
tained, but Mrs. Vernon thought otherwise. 
The questions were: 

1. How shall I communicate with my 
mother ? 

2. How shall I fulfill my promise to my 
mother? 

Mrs. Vernon heard the answer to the first 
question : 

* ^ Through a developed psychic, through Mrs. 
F. if she goes through Chicago.'^ 

Mrs. Vernon heard the answer to the second 
question : 

^^ Something overturned, since this promise 
was made. (Vision of the crank of an automo- 
bile turning; something turning over; an auto- 
mobile turnover.) Tell Mary to patch it up 
and go ; she will understand if you say this. ' ' 



96 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

The two replies were transmitted by letter 
immediately to my sister, who in turn sent theni 
to her still anonymous friend. The replies 
were both significant, particularly the second. 
The lady in question had in fact been over- 
turned in her automobile, which had rolled over 
twice, exactly as Mrs. Yernon had seen it. She 
had been driving it herself and with her daugh- 
ter was severely injured. The concluding sen- 
tence, ^ ' Tell Mary to patch it up and go, ' ' was 
the direction as to how she should fulfill her 
promise to her mother, as it concerned her hesi- 
tation to go to visit a family connection with 
whom her relations had not been harmonious. 
This explanation was sent me by another sister, 
who stated that her friend was entirely satis- 
fied with the result of her attempt to reach her 
mother and to receive her advice. 

It is superfluous to observe that ^^ thought 
transference'' is eliminated from this incident, 
in its popular interpretation. Thought trans- 
ference it certainly was, from a mother to a 
daughter, through three intermediaries, totally 
ignorant of the significance of at least the sec- 
ond question or its answer. 

My sister died from pneumonia, following an 
operation for appendicitis. She had a slight 
cold at the time the operation was performed, 
which seemed of imminent necessity. A recur- 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 97 

ring infection of the antrum, which was, how- 
ever, not acute at the time, was, according to 
the following message, an element in the devel- 
opment of the pneumonia. 

(If the operation had been delayed until you 
had recovered from your cold, would the result 
have been the same?) 

Mrs. Vernon : ^ * Functional sections were in- 
fected, causing improper circulation which 
caused my death. But surgical pneumonia is 
one of the vicissitudes of surgery. Don't grieve 
over the spilt milk, but rather rejoice at the 
discovery of a permanent reunion. It might 
have occurred without the antrum.'' 

(Are you reaUy near me?) 

* ^ I am in the air with you. I am in the same 
ether. It is like being in a room above another ; 
if one is listening for messages one may per- 
haps hear them. It is as difficult to communi- 
cate as to hear from one room to another some- 
times. The fact of the awareness of the two 
helps. If you had not been waiting and listen- 
ing, I could not have made myself heard. We 
like the word awareness." 

(You said that Dr. Hodgson would manifest 
in the library; will you tell me what that 
meant?) 

^^The same group of controls tries to catch 



98 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

the attention of every medium and this name 
stuck in the psychic's mind." 

(Who is Imperator?) 

^* Psychical researchers there, here they hang 
out the shingle — ^Imperator. Psychical re- 
searchers on earth compile volumes, look 
through volumes; that means research. The 
Imperator group deduct and dictate, but only 
by means and through the medium of thoughts, 
and as no material records are kept, they can- 
not be researchers. '^ 

(I think that my sister would like to see 
W. E.) 

Again almost instantly the wireless message 
was received and the friend with whom I had 
discussed matters literary, during a brief visit 
to this country, over 25 years ago, came at our 
call, with his old phrases, his old similes, even 
his old trick of holding his head to one side 
while *' considering." 

Mrs. Vernon saw the vision of a crystal ball, 
in a walled garden, beautifully clear, yet reflect- 
ing all the colors of the spectrum. 

'^F, — ^We were great friends (vision of writ- 
ing). She wrote to me. Suddenly it snapped. 
(His death from heart failure.) She always 
encouraged me ; never said it was poor stuff. ' ' 
(His poetry.) 

(Are you happy?) 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 99 

* ^ Yes, very happy, but would have been hap- 
pier had I finished it out. The symbol de- 
scribed our friendship, F ^wonderfully pure, 

yet vivid and full of color. We do have regrets 
if we do not finish our work. I could have done 
better work, a little bit of alloy in the otherwise 
pure gold." 

(Have you anything to do?) 

^^Oh! yes, I am occupied all the time. One 
can teach, do missionary work. If you go over 
as a poet, you train poets, and come back to 
try and inspire poetry. We do not do any con- 
crete thing; we try to make people happy, and 
our condition depends upon our spiritual de- 
velopment. ' ' 

(Shall I send a message to your sister?) 

Mrs. Vernon saw him holding his head to one 
side and ^^considering.'' 

*'I have been very unhappy; earthly career 
unsatisfactory. Just missed it ; adored mental 
companionship. I would like to express again ; 
so others feel, whose earth careers were un- 
satisfactory.'' 

(Is there reincarnation?) 

'^ There is an inextinguishable vital spark, 
which while partaking of the universal whole, 
separates itself at intervals for the purpose of 
gleaning and acquiring ; this effort is called re- 
birth." 



100 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

(Do we remember in the final state all our 
successive existences?) 

Mrs. Yernon heard the continuance of the 
subject of his last sentence. 

* ' This accounts for the preeminence of some 
and the insignificance of other souls. After the 
receding of the whirlwind we gaze with dismay 
upon the debris ; if one wishes to reinstate one- 
self, and correct errors one is given the oppor- 
tunity. I have not paused long enough to put 
this in more beautiful language. After the 
whirlwind you go out to repair. 

(Do those who are satisfied go back?) 

'*It is not given to all to choose, the repair- 
ers go back.'' 

In answer to the question as to the final 
memory of the past reincarnations '^If the in- 
terest holds or the intellect " 

Mrs. Vernon heard my sister, who here joined 
in the conversation. 

** Just imagine Anna De Koven reading ^Old 
Mother Hubbard' for an afternoon's amuse- 
ment. You will not find it interesting to go 
back. When you are a fully developed seventh- 
heaven individual, all things are possible. Very 
few people are interested or care enough to look 
back over the past when they were undeveloped 
souls." 

Mrs. Vernon said at this point that she was 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 101 

conscious of the presence of a group of person- 
alities. They were, in fact, together : my sister, 
my poet friend, and finally, entering with a 
laugh, in which Mrs. Yemon said she felt in- 
clined to join herself, the same friend, Mrs. 
S , who had come at my call in May. 

*^Tell Anna that I have undertaken to super- 
intend children, Ardente Studente. I did not 
like children, but for the discipline of my soul, 
I have undertaken to teach these children. 
Anna would laugh. I always liked to do un- 
usual things, but this time have descended to a 
platitude.'' 

The information as to this witty friend's oc- 
cupations was expressed in a highly character- 
istic fashion. Her dislike of children, who in 
fact bored her, will also be remembered by 
those who knew her. 

Mrs. Vernon heard my sister: *^Anna knows 
that I am with her most of the time. Try the 
automatic hand writing; get a large piece of 
paper and turn your head. Anna's ponderous 
mind sometimes gets in the way — (laughs) — 
hand goes round and round. Don't mind if the 
messages are unsatisfactory, the contact will 
help." 

(Has she a good-by message for me?) 

^'I tried already to tell her when I spoke 
about the rock. I am like a person just learn- 



102 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ing to swim over here, and so much helped if I 
can feel that I can just get the end of my toe on 
the rock. Tell her I have my lovely memories, 
that go back farther than husband or child, and 
with them I comfort myself. 

On August the 1st, a totally unexpected ap- 
pearance, that of the Late Dr. Polk of New 
York, announced itself, for the reason that my 
sister's eldest son had at that time been warned 
that an operation for appendicitis might be 
necessary. She had apparently consulted him. 

Mrs. Vernon heard: *'An older person than 
your sister who obtrudes himself for the pur- 
pose of adding a superscription to the list of 
names. I was a doctor. Her son — an opera- 
tion, not the same operation; analogy in the 
cutting. You will hear of it. I came to report 

because it was in my line. Frank P (the 

name of his son). 

Mrs. Vernon heard my sister: ** Captain 

How good looking he is!'* 

(Is this your son!) 

**No, a contemporary. Anna did not take 
this seriously. Just a little test; they like to 
see that we are happy.'' 

(Do you know what your second son is do- 
ing?) 

^^He prevailed, anxious to do it and has sue- 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 103 

ceeded; got permission (shows him turning 
over something). I know that he has said that 
he wished that I could see him. (Shows some- 
thing heavy across his arms; he pulls some- 
thing, like a strap ; it comes across his chest ; a 
cup-working, looking up, hands active. Dressed 
in brown like khaki; like a uniform. Shows a 
vision of an American flag waving.) Patriotic 
— going to France. (Gesture of pushing as of 
departure) — mj boy — the other — tries to please 
me. I am gratified at his wish to contribute 
to his country's cause. I am happy at his 
thought of me.*' 

I was not informed that my sister's eldest son 
had contemplated an operation until some eight 
months after this meeting with Mrs. Vernon. 
My sister's exclamation about the good looks 

of Captain referred to an afternoon's visit 

paid to her by an officer from Camp Upton 
on the occasion of her last visit to me in New 
York in December, 1917. He was not a near 
acquaintance but distinctly deserved her en- 
comium. 

Her second son had gone to work in a muni- 
tion factory. I had been informed of this fact, 
but not that he had been compelled to persuade 
his father to permit him to enter the factory 
nor was I aware of any of the details or char- 
acteristic motions in the execution of his work. 



104 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Her eldest son was on the eve of his departure 
for France with his company. The operation 
was only contemplated and was finally found 
to be unnecessary. 

Two weeks later on the 15th of August, I saw 
Mrs. Vernon at the Copley Plaza in Boston. I 
began the conversation by speaking aloud to 
my sister, telling her of my appreciation of the 
lucidity of her messages. 

Mrs. Vernon heard: **I grasp the significance 
without the necessity of words but expressing 
it focuses the ideas. (Shows an image of a 
glass, fiUed with clear and sparkling water.) 
This philosophy is like pure water. (Pouring 
a rosy liquid into the glass.) Its purity and 
brilliancy is warmed and colored by the friend- 
ship existing between you (Mrs. Vernon and 
myself). 

(Could you get assistance from Dr. Hodgson 
and George Pelham in furnishing tests and 
other material for publication?) 

** Almost anything which can be a test is of 
scientific value. Make little anecdotes, short 
as possible, with as many witnesses as are able 
to give names. Too much verbosity in the 
records supplied by the Psychical Eesearch in- 
vestigators. ' ' 



"THE BROKEN ARCS" 105 

(Are you still with me?) 

^^Oh! Yes, and I have seen your depression. 
Take an inventory of the tests ; you have quite 
a number, and more will be given. ' ' 



CHAPTER V 
**In Heaven- the Perfect Eound." 

THERE was a long interim between the last 
meeting with. Mrs. Vernon and that of Oc- 
tober the 2nd, which occurred at her house in 
New York. I was on the eve of a visit to our 
old home and my sister asked certain things 
of me, indicating what I should say to certain 
members of her family. 

(Do you feel the separation less; are you 
happier f) 

My sister: '* Calmer but not happy yet. Not 
gay. But it is quiet and peaceful. I am under 
instruction. ' ' 

(All gayety is over for me.) 

* ^ I do not know what Anna would have done 
without this. I am learning serious things, not 
gay; but I know that it is right that I should 
learn them. ' ' 

(Will you help us and send us messages all 
this coming "Winter when I shall see Mrs. Ver« 
non continuously?) 

*^The messages will be as brilliant and spark- 

106 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 107 

ling as a circle of gems. (Gesture of putting 
Mrs. Vernon ^s hand in Anna's and then putting 
her own hand over the clasped hands.) Indis- 
soluble. A wonderful combination, because 
you and Mrs. Vernon have that quality, sup- 
posedly masculine, of frankness. Will accept 
nothing but truth ; no pretense. ' ' 

On October the 26th after my return from 
my journey, my sister commented upon my oc- 
cupation while there, of examining and sorting 
certain family papers. 

^ ^ Anna is a procurator of pedigrees. Papers, 
letters. ' ' 

(Have you a message for Edith?) 

*'Why! who is Edith? I feel such a rush of 
affection ; she is holding out both arms and she 
says : ^ Tell Edith that I would like to give her 
a big hug. Edith really loved me. ' ' ' 

(Have you seen Henrietta?) 

^'I see much of Henrietta. She has been 
much interested in my spiritual development; 
has been a real rock of support. Salt of the 
earth. ' ' 

(I hope that I am not retarding your develop- 
ment by occupying you with these earthly com- 
munications?) 

^ ^ Occupation is salutary for every one. Tell 
Anna she is not taking my time, but she is pro- 



108 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

viding me with an occupation. Perseverance 
will disclose the fabric of our ethereal exist- 
ence, overshadowed as it is by the orbit of 
materiality. (Shows a vision of a figure of a 
man walking down a sunlit road; his shadow 
behind him.) Sunlight plays over his figure, 
and a shadow follows it. The ethereal world 
is a shadow of the material. The two lives are 
as inseparable as shadow and figure.^' 

(Is the material world in shadow and the 
ethereal world in the light!) 

^ ^ No, both alike are illuminated by the sun. ' ' 

(Are your ethereal symbols as definite to you 
as our material symbols are to us?) 

^'We construct our own symbols." (Shows 
bubbles rising in the air.) 

(Is the world which surrounds you an emana- 
tion from the Divine mind?) 

**The power of construction is of divine ori- 
gin. We can construct but our creations do not 
clutter up. They vanish when we are finished 
with them. Our bodies being unlike material 
bodies have not the wants of material existence. 
But if we wish to produce an arm chair for 
instance, and look at it, we can do so. Our 
bodies are of light ether which float in the 
heavier ether near the earth. * ' 

(Are there buildings for assemblages?) 

*'If we wish to symbolize a hall of learning, 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 109 

we can do so. People over here have to be in 
harmony. ' ' 

(Would several people have to combine to 
construct these halls of learning?) 

*' People over here must be in harmony with 
the conditions ; newcomers could not construct. 
Tyros toil to no purpose, hence the advantage 
of instruction. The masters who have served 
through probation and initiation up to fulfill- 
ment can direct the construction single 
handed. ' ' 

(Is nature over there or what corresponds to 
nature here, the emanation from the mind of 
God?) 

* ' The map is provided by a Divine efflux ; the 
scheme is provided, but the partitions are made 
by the inhabitants here. The Universe remains 
the same.'' 

(Do you mean that the ethereal world is last- 
ing; that it holds?) 

**This world does hold, the universe holds; 
but the appurtenances vanish like the foam in 
the wake of a ship.'' 

(Do you see the S.P.R. group still?) 

(Shows a picture of two letters closely inter- 
twined as in a monogram, enclosed in a laurel 
wreath. One letter is brightly illumined, the 
other is darker.) * ^ My twin brother is even more 
spiritually developed than mother. His teach- 



110 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ings are more sympathetic than mother ^s. I 
need no other teacher." 

(That must be very lovely, that companion- 
ship.) 

**It is more lovely than human conception.'' 

(Are you not happy in this?) 

**Very happy and fortunate. A good deal I 
give you is from him. He entwines his spir- 
itual tendrils around my soul and has promoted 
my welfare through insisting upon my enlight- 
enment. He reveals the intricacies of disen- 
tanglement from earthly ties. (Shows a sym- 
bol of a chestnut burr, falling open and reveal- 
ing the beautiful clear nut beneath.) He says 
that if sound at the core, all exterior defilement 
will fall away. ' ' 

(Must you disentangle yourself from all 
earthly ties?) 

**As the magnet to the steel, so does our love 
ever bind us, and mutual development will re- 
sult therefrom but never separation. ' ' 

(I feel the separation just as bitterly as ever; 
so bitterly at our old home.) 

^^My emotional stress is just as great as her 
own. I must collect myself. (Shows herself 
with hands over her eyes as in weeping.) I am 
supported by the words of wisdom of the de- 
veloped souls about me while you have only 
this philosophy.'' 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 111 

(Are you near us in your own spiritual body 
or do you communicate from a distance?) 

*^We project ourselves from a distance. It 
is just as if there were a central telephone office, 
with an operator who calls up a number, and 
the personalities are allowed to speak along 
the wires; without this operator we would be 
impotent. You also have to have a psychic. 
After the communication is established it is my 
magnetism which you feel." 
(Are you near sometimes?) 
^^ Sometimes I am in the same ether, but even 
if it were only from the next house, without 
the medium here and there, we cannot com- 
municate. The spiritual proximity may be of 
the closest character, but even through the wall 
there cannot be clear communication without 
the telephone, no matter how close it is. This 
is the exact condition." 

(Who is the operator now?) 
*^ Groups of beings who might almost be 
called overcharged electrically, overcharged dy- 
namos, sensitive, magnetic. It is a peculiar 
nervous organism, like psychics on earth, who 
are not necessarily very spiritually developed. 
Over here the most successful are those who 
have this magnetic development in conjunction 
with the light of spirituality. ^ ' 
Edith and Henrietta were both very intimate 



112 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

with my sister. Edith is Mrs. Stillman of 
Chicago, who received the letter from my sister 
about the table cover. Henrietta, also of Chi- 
cago, was Mrs. Strobel. She died about ten 
years ago. 

The intimate association of my sister with 
her twin brother who died in infancy is here 
most beautifully symbolized. 

Her statements about the construction of ob- 
jects and landscapes in the ethereal world, are 
up to this point all illustrative of the process of 
projection or evocation by thought alone. 
Later messages very clearly point to another 
process, which includes a manipulation of ether. 

The method of communication described so 
clearly, as similar to that used in a central tele- 
phone office, with specially endowed operators 
at both ends of the wires, is very interesting 
particularly in the statement that the spirit 
operators have peculiar nervous organisms. 
Does then the ^^peresprit'^ or spiritual body 
possess nerves? and do these nerves, vitalized 
by electricity, represent a thought-conducting 
apparatus similar to that of the incarnate 
psychic? 

On Wednesday, the 31st October, which was 
the nineteenth sitting, my sister for the first 
time gave information regarding thought vibra- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 113 

tions which operate upon matter. The nature 
of this matter is not explained at this time. 
This reference to ** constructional vibrations" 
is the only one as yet recorded in transcen- 
dental communications. ' ' 

My first question was : 

(Do you construct houses?) 

My sister : ^ ^ Starts sets of vibrations, which 
much be rhythmical, then we construct. (Turns 
the handle of a machine). These are construc- 
tional vibrations and they differ from thought 
vibrations as in telepathy or thought trans- 
ference in communication. The thought trans- 
ference and telepathy vibrations are entirely 
emanations from the brain. When we wish to 
build a house, these constructional vibrations 
which we use correspond to our physical man- 
ual efforts on earth. (Shows a symbol of a 
machine like a coffee grinder from which a sub- 
stance like ground coffee comes.) Brain di- 
rects, but the matter must first be originated. 
Matter falls into shape without manipulation 
by hand." 

Here then is a very clear statement that in 
the construction of houses some form of matter 
is employed. It is interesting to note that the 
possession of a brain by these ethereal opera- 
tors is also distinctly stated. 

(Do you live in a house yourself?) 



114 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

** Figure to yourself a beautiful landscape, 
intersected by a sparkling shaded stream, on 
the banks of which recline two figures, my twin 
and I. There amidst verdant fragrance I re- 
ceive my instruction daily. Vincent unfolds to 
me the glories of spiritual upliftment and occu- 
pations, condemning gently but firmly the viru- 
lence of wasting one's time in degrading pur- 
suits. He wrestled with my combativeness at 
first, and overcame my arguments with regard 
to the nature of certain earthly amusements to 
which I clung. He said he had better food for 
me. I resented being deprived of these things. 
To this his plane and to this beautiful place, the 
fabric of his imagination, I am allowed to as- 
cend for my spiritual instruction. It is a higher 
region, so we speak of going up to it. The 
higher one goes the more harmonious are the 
conditions. When we are less developed we 
have to force our way through uncongenial 
surroundings.'* 

The process of evocation of landscapes by 
thought alone, as here quite clearly indicated, 
is in definite contrast with the process of 
manipulation of matter as described in the fore- 
going message. 

(Where do you go when you come back after 
this daily instruction?) 

*^I come back to a sort of hall, a far more 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 115 

material place, a sort of community house. 
There is confusion there and much coming and 
going. We convert to our uses the discarded 
constructions of those who have gone before us. 
The only way to work up to harmonious condi- 
tions is through spiritual development. We 
use these discarded houses as people in a city 
live in houses built by others, but when we grow 
in spirituality, we can build for ourselves beau- 
tiful domains. I can go up to Vincent for my 
spiritual instruction, but I cannot stay there. 
I must develop out of the conditions in which 
I am now.'' 

(Is this house like a hotel?) 

* ^ A place for transients. They come in num- 
bers and they go on. (An impression of hurry 
and confusion as before.) There are material 
abodes provided for the requirements of mate- 
rial souls to whose brains the earth images are 
still clinging." 

(Do you see anyone you know in this house 
of transients?) 

* * If we do see friends we are so anxious about 
where we are going next that we hardly speak. 
Here the more highly developed spirits come to 
lend a hand to those they love. They transport 
them to other realms adapted to their develop- 
ment. They eject trespassers and that, I may 
say in passing, is one of the great problems here 



116 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

as well as in earth life. There are curiosity 
seekers, and scoffers and mischiefmakers, who 
have to be guarded against. The guides attend 
to that." 

To my next question as to whether she had 
gone to a place like that when she first went 
over, my sister replied in a narrative of her 
first moments after her death when she awoke 
in the other world. This narrative, as it seems 
to me, is quite unique in its beauty and clarity 
of description. 

**Food is given to material spirits; a sort of 
flaky stuff like snow was given to me. (Shows 
a vision of her body prostrate, with someone 
bending over her, feeding her this snowy mix- 
ture.) A blow, as if I had been knocked down, 
prostrated. This revived me and enabled me to 
collect myself. Prostrated by the shock of go- 
ing over suddenly. ' ^ 

(Who gave you this food?) 

*'A man with a gray beard, and clad in a 
white garment. He chose to assume this vener- 
able appearance because it was more comfort- 
ing. The first thing I saw was this venerable 
man. Then to my restricted vision there ap- 
peared relays of benign spirits whom I first 
took to be nurses as they were clad in white. 
They bent over me and ministered to me in 
words of ineffable sweetness and wisdom, ex- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 117 

plaining that death was like birth, entailing a 
separation from previous conditions, a wrench. 
I rebelled against the necessity of the separa- 
bility of the soul from the body. I tried to 
express my unwillingness to accept this, my 
horror at the operation, in a vain pantomime. 
Then in instant response to this mute appeal 
appeared my parents and my brother. They 
bent over me and at first I thought they were 
whispering. Then I perceived strange delicate 
sounds, liquid, yet vibrant, which did not strike 
upon my auditory nerves but pierced to the 
center of the brain. They were like no earthly 
sounds, and I perceived that they revealed their 
command over the telepathic means of com- 
munication. ' ' 

(Did you recognize them at once?) 

**Yes, they did not seem changed. They had 
assumed their earthly appearance or I would 
not have recognized them. ^ ' 

(Do you usually wear this spiritual body; is 
it a garment like the material body?) 

**We like to be recognized by our spiritual 
characteristics. We can assume our earthly 
form at will. Faces remain somewhat the same 
in the ethereal body in which we ordinarily 
appear." 



118 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

On November the Ttli, the group of Mrs. 
Vernon's controls manifested themselves, in 
answer to my opening remark that I hoped that 
my sister would go on with her narrative. 

Controls: *^This is an individual case which 
illustrates the universal process. The souls 
are always greeted by their loved ones. Mary 
and Thomas (Mrs. Vernon's grandfather) 
make known their presence. ' ' 

(Is this the Society for Psychic Eesearch 
Group?) 

^^We take turns. Myers, James, Hodgson — 
we came over tremendously interested in this 
thing and we keep at it still as it is the only 
thing which lasts.'' 

A tentative description of a psychic telegraph 
was here interpolated by Edwin Friend. 

Controls : *'If you wish you can go on with 
your narrative. Edwin Friend has passed on 
to his pursuits. Just dropped in to talk about 
the instrument. It is good for the psychic to 
have certain lines out when the fishing is good. 
Does not get stale. According to the rules of 
courtesy the psychic should receive the mes- 
sages when he has the time to speak. Your 
sister has a hand in it. All these communica- 
tions are handled by the same group of controls. 
Those who wish to communicate say when they 
wish to communicate. Must take into considera- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 119 

tion the conditions. Your sister tells us what 
she wants to say. Good minds yours and Mrs. 
de Koven's, and her sister's mind also. A good 
combination which clarifies the forces. This 
combination is sympathetic to us. The process 
is always the same. Mrs. Vernon is the psychic 
and we are her controls, the only variant com- 
ing from the diversity of the communicator and 
the sitters. We are going to put it through 
wdth you and Mrs. de Koven. We have at last 
got the proper conditions. It is the same group 
of controls. These men are in the Imperator 
group. Ancient and wise spirits who can do 
this from many aeons of experience. Imperator 
is a control. In your sister's experience we 
brought you up to the reunion period. Process 
of separation of body and soul.'' 

(Was it in mercy that my sister was permitted 
to communicate with me so soon?) 

My sister: *' Messengers attend to that." 
(Shows a vision of a religious procession carry- 
ing something which looks like a sacrament.) 
The Ceremony of Allotment. Relatives met me 
but they could not stay with me. I was led 
where I could develop in this procession sup- 
ported by my relatives. This is where the 
masses for the dead of the Roman Catholic 
Church are so wonderful. They do seem to 
reach up." 



120 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

(Mary and Minnie [her old servants] did 
have a mass said for you.) 

^^Yes, I knew it. It helped me. It reached 
me. Thus we proceeded to the realm of rest- 
less souls, who quiver with a desire to return 
and resume their accustomed habits. These 
souls prevent their own development by contin- 
uously clinging to lost joys. Myriads here are 
in this condition, but permanency retains its 
hold upon few. Most are fortunate enough to 
develop out of it. Wisdom and mercy prevail, 
through the efforts of divine masters, who en- 
courage the interest and desire for spiritual 
growth. ' ' 

(Do you want to come back still?) 

^^No, for I realize that I cannot come back 
and I have accepted the inevitable. One must 
go on, else one sinks into ineffable despair. 
The promulgation of spiritual growth is our 
greatest occupation over here, interspersed 
with mental occupations such as music. ' ' 

At the next sitting on November the 17th, 
before my sister was permitted to go on with 
her narrative, the controls reverted to their 
previous discussion of the means and methods 
of communication, adding some observations 
concerning the origin of the peculiar powers 
of the psychic. Prefacing their discussion by 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 121 

the statement that human magnetism arises 
from the action of opposing currents of elec- 
tricity, they added that each personality pos- 
sesses a projecting or psychic force. Although 
this force is the non-material part of the or- 
ganism, and therefore spiritual, it is not neces- 
sarily religious. It does, however, tend to vivi- 
fy the mental powers. Some discarnate and in- 
carnate personalities possess this force in a 
peculiar degree. It gives them control of the 
psychic forces which surround the earth. The 
universe is regulated in an order of rhythm 
and harmony, to which these circumambient 
forces are attuned. Highly developed souls 
are in harmony with these forces. Does not 
this agree with the statements of the peculiarly 
organized human beings who assert that they 
are ^^in harmony with the higher forces'' and 
that by controlling and evoking them, they are 
able to work miracles of healing? And as elec- 
tric currents are known to pervade the earth 
and its atmosphere, is not electricity, as dis- 
tinctly suggested in the opening sentences of 
the following argument, the universal conduc- 
tor of these psychic forces, of both physical and 
mental energy? 

Mrs. Vernon heard: ^^ Electrodes produce 
heat through the friction of opposite currents. 
Thus human magnetism receives its vital quali- 



12^ A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ties through the interpolation of various oppos- 
ing currents. Each personality contains all the 
elements of a projecting force which vivifies 
the mentality to a greater or less degree, ac- 
cording to the spiritual development — a refine- 
ment or development of psychic force which is 
the non-material element of a personality, not 
necessarily religious. It does not follow that 
psychics are good or that spirits are high- 
ly developed, but they have control over 
certain of these psychic forces. These forces 
or elements surround the earth, and upon 
these the psychic has control as in tele- 
pathic communication. These forces exist in 
the universe unheeded by the majority until 
development awakens an interest in them. A 
material soul thrust suddenly from its earthly 
habitation may be passed by the harmonious 
and rhythmical personalities unless they take 
on the self-appointed task of caring for these 
wanderers. The universe is regulated in an 
order of rhythm and harmony. The developed 
souls conform to this harmony and they go on 
their way unheeding their newcomers unless 
some voluntarily elect to take care of them. 
This service is optional over here as it is on the 
earth. Fortunately for your sister, her brother 
has elected to convey glad tidings and to act as 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 123 

a messenger for hope to her, bewildered by new 
conditions/' 

Mrs. Vernon beard my sister: ^'It is veri- 
tably a withdrawal of the curtain like a rent in 
the clouds. (Shows a vision like the last act 
of Faust with angels ascending.) Indescrib- 
able, unspeakable light. The light was so won- 
derful! but the prostrate body attracts one at 
first, until custom reveals that the pulsing soul 
departs to regions of rarefied ether where 
neither heat nor cold nor hunger or thirst pene- 
trate. (Shows a vision of a globe like the earth 
with a wire netting around it.) Souls are 
borne along on these currents to different de- 
grees, going round and round.'' 

(Are you still in that house of transients?) 

**Yes, first I was a novitiate, but now I am 
an interne. I am now helping the unhappy, 
and now I am helping others. It is almost like 
a hospital of sick and homesick souls. I have 
finished my restlessness and go up to see Vin- 
cent every day for my instruction. ' ' 

(Is this hospital the first station near the 
earth?) 

*^Yes, the first passenger station or hospi- 
tal." 

(Do your parents come to the hospital to see 
you?) 

* * Yes, they have reverted to their young days 



lU A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

wlien they were first drawn together. They 
come hand in hand together to see me, with 
happy expressions on their faces, and they are 
interested in what I am doing. Mamma is no 
longer disgruntled with me. I am a good little 
girl, and doing all I can. (Vision of our mother 
with her hand on my sister's shoulder.) I want 
to proceed. I want to move on away from here. 
I do not think that I could ever do missionary 
work. That would not suit me. Mamma does 
missionary work and Vincent does missionary 
work, also, but Papa does something mental. 

(Do families not live together over there?) 

^^It is more like fraternities. Like draws 
like.'' 

(Who are you with? Are you still associated 
Aviththe S.P.R. group!) 

'*Yes. I am still associated with them. My 
chief interest lies with them. Mamma's inter- 
ests do not. Without them I should have lan- 
guished for a word from the earth. Psychics 
provide meat and drink for languishing souls 
over here as well as for those on earth. This 
is what she (Mrs. Vernon) did for me, in bring- 
ing me in touch with Anna. The homesickness, 
the longing for those we love, that we leave on 
earth, is what hurts us. This is the psychic's 
mission, for we are just as hard pushed over 
here as those on earth. (To Mrs. Vernon.) 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 125 

Never belittle your task. If you could see the 
group over here, and the satellites attracted by 
the glow, agonized for just one word. Many 
have waited for years to hear just one word 
from those whom they have left. One word 
is enough for those who have longed for years. 
Then they can go on with their development.'' 

(Will you please look up T. and Gr., for their 
mother wishes to speak with them to-morrow.) 

* ' T has the exaltation of achievement. A 

cloud arises from these dead soldiers. It is a 
beautiful atmosphere and peculiar to those who 
have achieved something. Those who have 
done nothing do not have this aura. This ex- 
altation of achievement helps them very much. ' ' 

(I have no fear of death.) 

**When all things have righted themselves, 
Anna will come to me and in the glow of spir- 
itual and mental intercourse will our days be 
passed. (Showing a vision as of looking 
down a long lane through an opera glass.) But 
Anna has work to do. She must complete this 
work and through this work she will escape 
being overwhelmed in the labyrinthine prob- 
lems which overwhelm so many souls when they 
come over here. Strive to entertain the idea 
that spiritual advancement is without exagger- 
ation laying up for yourself treasure in 
heaven." 



126 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Mrs. Vernon heard Mother: *'I am very 
much pleased with our darling's development. 
(Vision of my mother advancing and my sister 
running away.) I also see her mistakes. 
I should not have expected a child to develop 
before her time. Some people are children up 
to the age of eighty-three. I still have Anna's 
spiritual development at heart." 

(Have I progressed in my own way?) 

*^Yes, you have progressed a great deal. 
Your spirituality is more material than mine. 
It deals with more projects than mine does. 
Your sister misses her sewing, but they have 
tried to supply this want with other things. One 
can sew over here, but it seems futile.'' 

(What have you been doing!) 

*'I seek out those with distorted spiritual 
viewpoints. I try to state plainly that common 
sense and wisdom lead to spiritual development 
in the end. Anna will laugh to hear that I 
discourse on these subjects sometimes.*' 

(Do you and your husband live together in a 
house?) 

^ ' Just think ! We disport ourselves together. 
We reside when we choose under the same por- 
tico, but our different occupations separate us 
at periods reclaiming and protecting us from 
differences of opinion. Compulsory conditions 
are what create unhappiness. There is a tie 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 127 

which unites us which does not always unite 
those who have been married. Anna may not 
understand that there is a tie between us which 
does not always exist.'' 

The characteristic trials of my sister and her 
mother are very plainly evident in these mes- 
sages. The reunion of our parents and their 
return to the earliest days of their companion- 
ship, in which they indulge with mutual delight 
in the midst of their varied occupations, gives 
an idea of heaven which to our human compre- 
hension can hardly be enhanced. 

At the next sitting of November the 22nd, I 
asked to be informed as to the occupations of 
our father. Mrs. Vernon's controls replied to 
this question: 

^^Your father supervises the outgoing souls 
on the mission of projecting schemes for the 
immersion of the material into the mental." 

(Does this mean that our father is working 
for the improvement of the earth souls, or for 
others who have passed on?) 

^* Earth souls when sufficiently sensitive re- 
ceive transmissions from across the Gulf, im- 
proving them mentally and diverting (assist- 
ing) them in various attainments." 

(Has our father's experience in controlling 



128 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

men in Ms political career helped Mm in tMs 
occupation?) 

Mrs. Vernon heard F: *^Anna must not ex- 
aggregate (modestly) . I only did my bit, but 
what experience I gleaned on the earth has 
been of great value in my welfare work here." 

Asking now of my sister if her statement 
that *'the universe held" coincided with her 
other statement that her twin brother's land- 
scape was the passing construction of his imagi- 
nation, she attempted again to explain what 
then seemed to me contradictory information. 
She enlarged upon the imaginative method and 
made a statement about the mind as being in 
the last analysis, the origin of all forms. This 
recalls Dr. Geley's hypothesis of the creative 
process of materialized organisms and his opin- 
ion that all seemingly material appearances are 
only representations of such appearances, 
evoked and constructed by mind. 

My sister: ^^It is like going to a moving- 
picture show and seeing them reel off a film. 
(Shows a picture of a cinematograph in opera- 
tion.) Very difficult for you to understand how 
the real thing according to your ideas is after 
all the only figment of the imagination. As for 
instance, you think that the active mind is the 
real thing and the subconscious mind the imagi- 
native, while really the subconscious is the 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 129 

real thing and the active is the unreal. Over 
here ideas and images do take form. It is a 
mental manipulation of matter and not a man- 
ual, employed by those whose development at- 
tains thereto. These laws are almost beyond 
the comprehension of terrestrial beings and 
recently arrived souls over here, as they depend 
for their manipulation upon thought control. 
Vincent's landscape depends for its existence 
upon the mind's eye of the giver. It is there 
when presented to our view by a powerful 
thought current.'' 

(We want to think that there is a tangible 
world and one that does not pass away.) 

* * The universe does hold. It is like a clouded 
slate. One must know how to rub away the 
cloud or one cannot see the picture underneath. 
There are others over here who have a sort of 
befuddled vision. There is a realm, a very 
vivid, sustaining and abiding realm, but one 
must be developed to be able to look into this 
realm. There is such a veil between and so 
thick a cloud, one must have an abiding faith 
that the realm is there. The realms themselves 
are manufactured through the desire for good 
and beautiful things of the evolved souls. Jesus 
says : ' In my father 's house are many mansions 
and I go to prepare a place for you. ' Evolved 
and highly spiritual souls must go before to 



130 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

prepare these places. The spiritual desire for 
beauty and harmony is the mortar from which 
these realms are made." 

The profound significance of the statement 
that the active mind is the unreal and the sub- 
conscious the real, cannot be overlooked. It 
would seem to indicate that the subconscious 
is the eternal part of us, already existing in 
the infinite unseen, while what we think are our- 
selves, are dreaming ghosts of our real person- 
alities, spinning out a brief earthly existence 
among sights which are themselves figments of 
the imagination — symbols adapted to our earth- 
ly perception. 

In my next question I asked my sister if she 
was conscious of the presence of the Christ 
spirit. 

**The Christ spirit pervades the universe 
from the darkest depths of the earth to celes- 
tial spheres." 

(Do any souls see Christ!) 

**None that I have ever met have seen him." 

(Do souls go to other planets?) 

** Encircling each zone like the crust of a 
pie ( !) are layers of impenetrable though lumin- 
ous liquid matter conveying more or less read- 
ily the electrical currents which connect the 
planetary system. By means of these currents 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 131 

this system is held together. Is this plain to 
Mrs. Vernon r' Mrs. Vernon said **Yes." 

(Are there spiritual zones around each 
planet?) 

*'The requirements, atmospheric and other- 
wise, of each zone create indigenous beings. 
The passage into eternity or the hereafter 
varies according to the planet but upon recep- 
tion into spiritual realms coordination and con- 
version into ethereality occurs. ' ' 

(Do souls go from one planet to another?) 

** Simultaneously Mercury, Venus, the Earth 
and Mars disgorge into eternity. The earth 
contains rarer specimens of mental exuberance 
than planets in the descending scale from the 
sun. Hence the origin of the sun and light wor- 
shippers. The means of transit afforded us 
through loss of corporeal clogs enables us to 
detect the advantage and superiority of the 
earth dwellers. Ethereal beings may enjoy a 
plunge through the orbits of various planets 
but earthly development makes unnecessary a 
sojourn upon another planet.'' 

(Do these less developed souls rise as they 
go to the ethereal existence?) 

**Some very quickly, but some take a very 
long time." 

(Is the Christ spirit active in the other plan- 
ets?) 



13^ A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

**Yes, it pervades all the universe for, after 
all, the Christ spirit is spirituality. It appears 
and reappears in individuals. You exhibit the 
Christ spirit if you do a kind deed — like a spark 
fanned into flame or extinguished according to 
the individual's wish." 

At the close of this sitting I asked my sister 
if she had seen any one else whom she liked to 
be with besides her parents and her twin 
brother. As if in answer to this question Mrs. 
Vernon was moved to look at some painted 
cupids on a screen in my boudoir in which we 
were sitting. My sister showed children danc- 
ing and said that she has many diversions. 

At this point other personalities manifested 
themselves as they did at the sitting following, 
so that it was not until a fortnight had passed 
that I was able to ask her what she had meant 
by showing the vision of the children dancing 
and pointing to the cupids on the screen. 

My sister: ^* Festival of the Eenaissance." (A 
second vision of little children dancing, bound 
with garlands which connect them together.) 

(It is now nearly a year since your last visit 
to me. I hope you know that I treasure the 
recollection of every moment of it.) 

'^Tell Anna that I feel what she says tele- 
pathically. Pattering of little feet, festival of 
the Renaissance. A festival celebrating indi- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND'' 133 

vidual spirituality. Each soul is fettered with 
material bonds. When the soul finally makes 
up its mind to rid itself of these bonds it has a 
festival of spiritual rebirth, the festival of the 
Renaissance. Before the soul comes to earth it 
IS spiritual; on earth it collects material clogs 
which cling when the soul first passes over, 
but when finally purged (freed) from these 
bonds and imbued with the desire for spiritual 
advancement it has this festival of the Ren- 
aissance. When a soul has burst these bonds 
and turned its back on all earthly ties it is cel- 
ebrated with all sorts of youthful symbols. One 
must verily become as a little child.'' 
(Did you see the cupids in the screen?) 
^ ^In order to impart it to you we have to make 
the medium see it.'' 

(Did you see it yourself?) 
**We sense things." 

(Are you near us when you point out things 
like that?) 

^^To quote the Scriptures * Nearer than hands 
or feet. ' Put this in brackets for Anna 's amuse- 
ment. Mamma gives me these quotations from 
the Scriptures." 

(Is Mamma with you now?) 
^*Yes, Mamma is here this morning." 
Mother : ^ ' I have learned that religion is not 
of necessity serious. I come to you now with a 



134 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

playfulness difficult for you to understand. I 
have learned to commingle religion with toler- 
ation and now I am going to make an epigram. 
(Hearing the word epigram.) Not epigram but 
aphorism. I can make epigrams also. Be- 
sprinkle the fertile soil of your soul with the 
ingredients of unselfishness and devotion to 
humanity. ' ' 

(Do you know and approve of the work I am 
now doing towards furthering patriotism?) 

^'Yes, but the only real uplift is charity 
towards mankind. The only thing that has 
value over here is lending a hand. Entirely 
apart from intellectuality. If charity and men- 
tality go not hand in hand it profits the soul 
nothing. ' ' 

My sister: ^'Does Anna understand the im- 
portance of my festival. Mamma has worked 
very hard over me." 

(Yes. I am so glad for her happiness.) 

'*A very important occasion for it indicates 
spiritual advancement. From now on I can 
really be more with Mamma. ' ' 

(I realize it must be happier for her.) 

*^Yes, greatly happier; we can be more to- 
gether. ' ' 

Mrs. Vernon said that she felt a lighter at- 
mosphere, an expression of happiness quite dif- 
ferent from that which she had perceived in the 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 135 

earlier sittings when my sister had not reached 
this stage of her development. 

(You said that you had diversions, such as 
music. What kind of instruments do you have 
and what kind of music?) 

^* All the instruments that you have and more 
besides, not made by hands. Contrived through 
methods of mental vibrations.'' 

(Do not these vibrations construct a certain 
kind of matter?) 

^ ^ How can I describe it ! It is more as when 
one dreams something; as in a dream every- 
thing seems real. You see people playing on 
instruments or following their various lines. It 
is just as if you departed from your waking life 
and came to live in a dream." 

(And yet the spiritual body is made of ether, 
is it not?) 

**Yes, and so are all of our images, manipu- 
lated ether not manually, manipulated men- 
tally. We discard these images like the shell 
of a locust, like the first model of a sculptor in 
clay before marble. We call them realities here 
because they are the first impressions. Nothing 
can take form without first being thought out. 
Therefore the thought forms seem to us the 
realities. The originating thought is the idea, 
not the result." 

(Do you assemble in halls and hear music?) 



136 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

** Indeed we do, without the discomfort of 
draughts and bad air.'' 

(You did not like music much on earth.) 

* ^ There are as many trends of mind over here 
as there. Music lovers have their music; art 
lovers their art; but all must qualify spirit- 
ually." 

Mrs. Vernon heard Mother: '^Anna will re- 
joice that we are together. We once were far 
apart. It will please Anna to know that we are 
quite close at last." (Sends a vision of patting 
Anna on the shoulder.) 

(Could I have a message of love from them 
both?) 

Mother: *'We aim our love laden darts 
straight at Anna's heart." (Showing a vision 
of both of them with bows and arrows in their 
hands aiming at Anna.) 

(I am much happier.) 

*^Balm comes from above." (Pointing up- 
ward with her bow) ^^We are happy; it has 
gladdened Anna's heart." 

In the interval between the last sitting of 
November the 27th and the ensuing one of De- 
cember the 10th my husband's brother had died 
in England. Two sittings had already been 
entirely occupied with messages from deceased 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 137 

members of my husband's family. At the end 
of the second sitting, Mrs. Vernon heard my 
sister's name. 

(Is my darling here?) 

**Yes. Has Anna got her question?" 

(Is the ethereal landscape formed by the Di- 
vine mind?) 

^^ Dominion over matter is a Divine prerog- 
ative and the conformation of the landscape 
occurs as the result of ethereal manipulation by 
superior intelligences endowed with the ability 
to conjure their own geographic emplacement 
by what the Kaiser called the divine right of 
Kings. The attainment of this privilege is ac- 
complished through aeons of individual aspira- 
tion for spiritual growth, eschewing the idea of 
reward of merit, simply aiming straight at the 
goal, through service to one's fellow-beings." 

(Is it in these landscapes that newcomers 
live?) 

*^ Privileged newcomers like myself attain 
glimpses of glorious realms through the efforts 
of solicitous relatives sufficiently evolved. Tell 
Anna as in the case of Louise 's openings, to see 
is to desire. Over here they show us these beau- 
tiful landscapes so that we may desire them." 

(Are you still in that house of transients?) 

* * Oh ! No, not since my awakening. 



138 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Rippling streamlets play, 
Here are sunbeams bright and gaj, 
Those you love are here together, 
Never menaced by the weather. 

Just to vary it a little. ' ' 

(Who do you mean by those I love?) 

** Mother and F, my brother and I, all here.'' 

(Are you living with our parents under the 
same portico?) 

Mrs. Vernon saw a vision of a chariot race, 
as in **Ben Hur,'' or the pictures of Aurora in 
her car. Three beautiful figures are pulling this 
car, a single beautiful figure in the car, clad in 
a Greek robe. ^'Papa and Mamma and my 
brother are pulling the chariot. They convoy 
me, teaching and protecting me.'' 

(Are you very happy now!) 

Mrs. Yernon saw a vision of a very radiant 
being. * ^ They conduct — ^I have to be carried. I 
do not direct ; do not hold the flower reins ; they 
pull me along." 

(Are there seven spheres in heaven?) 

*'With their ramifications there are seventy 
times seven." 

(In which sphere do you live?) 

^^Ehyme and reason; this is why I spoke in 
verse. There is one sphere where everything is 
rhythmical and in rhyme. Seven planes but in 
each of these planes there are variations of 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 139 

development. Tell Anna. Reggie's folks'' 
(gesture of pushing the brother gently away). 
(Have you helped him to communicate?) 

* * No, I have my turn. ' ' 

On December the 17th I continued my ques- 
tions to my sister asking her what kind of 
clothes she wore. 

* ^ My garments envelop me with a richness be- 
coming and lasting, yet ever changing colors 
and perfumes pervade their enveloping folds." 

(Are they white flowing garments?) 
*^Yes, yet not severe; swinging folds like 
chiffon, not as severe as the classic Greek lines. 

The soft breatli of the pine trees and salt from the sea. 
Commingle their essence when wafted to me.'* 

Assuming, we may imagine, her own lovely 
guise and surrounded by the loveliest images 
of human imagination, evoked by the angelic 
spirits of the heavenly hierarchy, my sister cele- 
brates her rebirth in a hew world, amid flower- 
bound children, dancing in a round. And again 
like Aurora, she voyages through the clouds, in 
a flower-decked chariot, convoyed by the radiant 
spirits of those who so loved her. In her little 
rhymes, she expresses her harmony with a har- 
monious world, and in her delight in music, in 
the perfumes of pines and the sea, she shows 



140 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

her enjoyment of all the pleasures of sense and 
of sight. Still seeking to learn more of the 
mysteries of this lovely existence, I asked her 
if the world evoked by the masters was eternal, 
if it endured. 

My sister : ' * So difficult to explain about the 
power of thought! The landscapes appear at 
the behest of the individual. They are perma- 
nent. If there is no table, and we want a pretty 
table we think of it and it will appear. If we 
want pink roses, they also appear. If you want 
to go to the mountains and are sufficiently de- 
veloped, the mountains come to us. What sym- 
bol can I usef The mountains came to Ma- 
homet. He conjured them up. ' ' 

Mrs. Vernon observed that it would be awk- 
ward if I wanted to go to the mountains and she 
wished to go to the seashore. 

*^ Don't be ridiculous! If Anna and you 
wanted to go to the seashore you would go to- 
gether. If you want to hold communion you 
would have to decide whether it would be the 
mountains or the seashore. People must be in 
harmony. The guides instruct the newcomers. 
What your aspirations and desires are, is de- 
termined by your trend of thought." 

(Can you see and hear?) 

^*We sense things." 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 141 

(Yet the ethereal body is a form of matter, is 
it not?) 

^^Yes, but it is so different; it does not have 
to eat or sleep. ' ' 

(But you had food at first, did you not?) 

*^Yes, the automaton needs lubrication for 
its performances during a certain time. When 
the body and soul are still somewhat together 
at first, but when they become thoroughly de- 
tached no such replenishment is necessary." 

(Is the aura of the same material as the 
ethereal body?) 

*'The aura represents the fragmentary evo- 
lutions of ethereal matter in process of form- 
ing a celestial encasement." 

(Has the ethereal body weight?) 

^'Infinitesimal, but tangible as the off-giv- 
ings of the pine trees, if collectible would have 
weight. ' ' 

Mrs. Vernon got an odor of pine trees. 

(Are you with me and do you see me?) 

** Often, and thought will always bring me." 

(Do you know how much I am missing you 
all these days?) 

' ' Yes. I have tried often to reach you, but the 
mechanism is not right. The mechanism is not 
quite right for these mental communications. 
Periwinkle shells contain their quota of imper- 
ceptible matter, but communication with them 



142 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

is impossible except at moments wlien they 
choose to protrude this sensitive substance. 
The process should be an intuitive or involun- 
tary application of natural laws rather than a 
determined or vigorous effort. Be on the alert ; 
on guard for these intuitive onslaughts but 
never attempt to force one. Shifty, evanescent 
and spasmodic. Fleet as Artemis must be the 
brain to detect them." 

At this moment Mrs. Vernon pointed to a 
stream of sunlight coming through the window 
and the brighter more distinct ray which lay 
upon the floor and as she spoke heard: ^^This 
stream of sunlight and the ray reflected on the 
floor are like body and soul, as near an explana- 
tion as I could give you.'' 

Evidently matter in the other world is Pro- 
tean, taking on visibility, weight, color and 
form at the behest of all powerful mind. So in 
the materialization experiments bone could be 
instantly supplied to the arm of the being whom 
Sir William Crookes photographed when its 
absence was observed by an experimenter. 

In Dr. Crawford's experiments the exuded 
substance was invisible, except to the photo- 
graphic plate. The statement that immediately 
after death, body and soul are still not entirely 
separated would seem to indicate that the ethe- 
real body, already existing in the material body, 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 143 

has absorbed somewhat of the heavier but still 
dissolvable substances of which that material 
body is composed. From these heavier ele- 
ments the ethereal body in its celestial form 
must be detached, and until this detachment is 
complete, some form of food is supplied. The 
occasional protrusion of periwinkles from their 
shells would seem to be mentioned as an anal- 
ogy in nature to the protrusion of the ethereal 
body of the medium, and an enhanced receptiv- 
ity resulting therefrom. It would also seem to 
indicate that the ethereal body, possessed by all 
human beings, must also conform to this condi- 
tion if transcendental messages are to be per- 
ceived. 

On December the 31st, my sister, in a mood 
of deepest humility and self-reproach, declared 
her disapprobation of her own character, her 
perception of the effect of her own beauty upon 
her earthly development. The contrast between 
this avowal and her earlier declaration that ^4t 
would not have been human'' not to use the 
power that beauty gave her, is so indicative of 
her development that I dare not suppress it. 
That her self -judgment was far too harsh would 
not only be recognized by all who knew her, but 
its severity is commented upon by her mother. 

^ ' Carve out of marble a beautiful statue, im- 



144 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

hue it with life and animation but neglect to 
inspire it with a soul — ^with all humility this 
was, but is not I." 

(I am happy about your spiritual develop- 
ment, but don't forget how much I miss you.) 

*^ Ephemeral, fragile, evanescent, corporeal 
beauty, trending continually earthward, tram- 
meling the soul with clogging chains of earthly 
desire. Blessed are those who escape these 
snares." 

(What are your occupations?) 

' ^ My occupation is developing the soul and it 
proceeds by logical stages ; first I learn the de- 
tonations (vibrations) or vocabulary of thought 
transference. (Shows a vision of ripples 
around a stone thrown into water, vibrations of 
air coming from stones clapped together.) 
There is so much to be learned. (Hands to head.) 
I have had to accommodate myself to the idea 
of spiritual standards instead of material 
standards. The life is entirely mental and spir- 
itual which is very difficult for you to follow. 
I am going to school, paying more attention to 
it than many others are doing. ' ' 

(Are you still instructed by your twin 
brother?) 

*^He supervises my education and sets my 
tasks, which I prefer to perform myself." 

(What kind of tasks?) 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 145 

* ^ Self -development ; I hear music if I want to 
but I did not have that trend, and over here we 
follow our trends. ' * 

(On earth you were fond of making people 
happy, fond of sewing and fond of sports.) 

Mrs. Vernon sees a vision of panels of em- 
broidery, with little painted figures such as are 
put on lampshades. ^^That is my amusement, 
but I was referring to the serious side of things. 
My occupations — ^not my amusements. My 
occupation consists chiefly in learning to de- 
velop myself. ' ' 

(What tasks does your brother give you?) 

*^He told me to hand on my first lesson to 
some one else. It is never well to hand on one's 
instructions to those who do not want it. It 
was difficult for me to learn this wordless com- 
munication. He gave me my first lesson in 
this wireless communication. He told me to 
teach it to some one else — ^I did so and I re- 
turned somewhat elated over my success. ' ' 

(Whom did you teach?) 

'^A friend of a humbler station than myself. 
(Shows a woman bending over a washtub.) 
She is the one I helped. In my earth life I 
was willing to help those people, but not at close 
hand. I returned elated and my brother said : 
(Shows a book with Lesson I on a page.) * You 
have learned Lesson I; now you must learn 



146 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Lesson IL' " (Turns over a page and points to 
Lesson IE — '* Garnering the Golden Grain of 
Patience.'') 

(Are you making those pretty little things for 
your house?) 

^'It is all much humbler than Anna can im- 
agine. I had to go back to the laundress and 
teach her a second time. Vincent said I had to 
continue it until I liked it. When I found I 
could not stand it any longer, I was permitted 
to regale myself with this artistic needlework. 
It is artistic and constructive and therefore has 
its value. In my house not built with hands 
but which nevertheless is on a firm foundation. '' 

(Did you make that house?) 

**I conjure that house when I want it, and 
by and by I shall have a finer mansion, not 
spurious and subject to decay as earthly dwell- 
ings are, but I shall have constructed it, I hope, 
with infinite patience and a gentle persistency, 
the combination of which qualities conquers all 
things. ' ' 

(Do you live alone in your house?) 

** Solitude is sometimes desirable but I prefer 
the indication of gentle presences which dispel 
the shadows." 

(Who are they?) 

'^Sometimes my mother, sometimes my 
brother, sometimes members of the band of ex- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 147 

quisite creatures who exult in the emancipation 
of the soul/' 

(Are you far away usually?) 

^^I inhabit the ethereal realm revolving 
around the earth and am borne by my desires 
near or further as the case may be. When I 
communicate I am in the room. ' * 

(Do you see where I am sitting?) 

*'Tell Anna, I am right behind her with my 
hand on her shoulder, but yet to her I appear 
very far away. The psychic feels my presence. 
To any one who is not psychic I might as well 
be a million miles away.*' 

(I love her all the time.) 

**The separation is very hard. (Nods her 
head gravely.) I feel that I did not always 
appreciate what Anna tried to do for me. I 
could feel very badly about it sometimes if I 
would let myself. Now it stands out like a guid- 
ing star." 

On Jauary the 14th, pursuing my questions, I 
asked my sister about the government in the 
other world. 

*^One of the first laws is that of harmony. 
There is no progress without harmony and even 
argumentative discussions flow harmoniously 
over here. The functional system whereby we 
live is a sort of circumlocution or general cir- 



148 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

dilation of ideas, generated by a Divine Dy- 
namo, which propels through the universe the 
principles of truth, life and spirituality. A 
harmony with these forces, being one of the 
first lessons which we learn. ' ' 

(Are there centers of influences like Univer- 
sities or Government institutions?) 

** Temples of learning are presided over by 
professors or masters who have conquered the 
problems of existence.'' (Vision of a temple 
such as the classic temple of Art at Bar Harbor, 
with spirits coming and going in classic gar- 
ments.) 

(Have these temples a permanent existence?) 

* * K you have a simple house and want a bet- 
ter one or a small automobile and can buy a 
larger one, you can discard the old ones. So 
it is over here. For the individual there is no 
permanency, it is all progress. But the tem- 
ples remain for those who want them; to this 
extent they are permanent. The individuals 
go on developing. Certainly the temples re- 
main for those who come after. I am taking 
the case of an Individual and in this there is 
no permanency.'' 

(You keep that house and the fancy work 
for a while?) 

'*We create things as we want them and we 
frequently look back on the things we have once 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 149 

desired as children look back upon their dolls.'* 

(Have you any advice about my life, as you 
watch me?) 

^'I feel that I can get quite near you; you 
do not obtrude your opinions; your attitude 
has been so humble that you have got much out 
of this communication. The receptive attitude 
has particularly pleased Mother. Mother was 
quite assertive herself about her spiritual at- 
titude when she was on earth. In order to 
learn one must assume a humbler attitude than 
she had.'' 

(I am very grateful for their commendation, 
but I want to know what more I should do. I 
have so much sadness to counteract.) 

Mother: ^^Go on with your writing; push it 
on but do not overtire yourself. We see that 
you are writing. Go on with your preparations 
for these weekly meetings." (They nod their 
heads and show two books.) 

(My thoughts are always with you; my last 
thought at night, my first in the morning.) 

My sister: ^^Tell Anna that her warm 
hearted affection has helped me, her devotion 
has sustained me.'' (Shows a vision of a 
book.) **The book of my life — romance — not 
instructive — towards the last I upheld my self- 
esteem by a certain degree of kindness and pa- 
tience. (Holds out the book to her mother.) 



150 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

**Even Mamma was pleased with my work to- 
wards the end. ' ' 

(You are so severe with yourself; your gay- 
ety and sympathy were of unspeakable help to 
so many!) 

^ * That was not voluntary ; it was an emana- 
tion of personality and having that I should 
have done more with it. Having this spontane- 
ous gift, I do not take any credit to myself for 
it.'' 

Mrs. Vernon heard: **Lucy — taut (something 
wound tightly around something, like some- 
thing on a reel). — (Gesture of despair.) 

(Are you happy yet?) 

'*I still want the fleshpots, but I am calmer. 
Tell Anna I am calmer and Mamma and my 
brother have been of infinite help. There is a 
great central force and if one is in harmony 
with these sublime ejections from this central 
dynamo all is well. But when one does not re- 
volve in harmony, but buffets the currents dis- 
cord arises. The meaning of ^Thy will be 
done' is, that one must be in harmony with 
these sublime forces. It is exactly like learn- 
ing the rules of a game, as if you insisted on 
playing tennis as if it were croquet, using your 
racquet as if it were a mallet. It does not 
minimize one's individuality to learn the rules 
of any game, or of this life any more than it 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 151 

would to learn how to play tennis. Harmony 
with law and progress in accordance with law. 
Good prevails and evil vanishes, burned up by 
its own poisonous emanations/' 

(Speaking to our mother, I then asked if she 
were happy when she first went over.) 

Mother: ''I had to forget some prejudices, 
my religious doctrines were cut and dried, hard 
and fast. I had to learn a broader philosophy. 
I have learned that out of evil good comes. I 
would not have admitted it on earth. Some 
people have to learn in that way.'' 

(She had a few temptations.) 

*^I led my domestic life in comfort. My de- 
sires were gratified; and there was a situation 
of financial solidity, but I worried over my chil- 
dren. I had to unlearn a good deal. I have 
more humor now. I can look back and laugh at 
my spiritual debauches. They were really 
funny. Exhorting and rhetorically pinioning 
people to hear all that I thought was the word 
of God. I had to learn a broader doctrine. 
Until the wonder and the profundity of it sank 
in, I had a hard time. Charity to all men is the 
rule of common sense after all. Terrible as 
it seems wrong doing is of use, as thus some 
learn. Never mind me. Our darling is doing 
beautifully. She would not say it herself.'* 

(Are you happy?) 



152 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

^^Eadiantly so. So will she be althougli she 
would not say so now. She has to effervesce at 
times ; so she did on earth ; but she is pure gold. 
(Vision of a glass of champagne.) Like the 
color of champagne, her heart is pure gold, inno- 
cent, this effervescence." 

The date of this, the thirteenth sitting was 
January the 14th and the message about 
^'Lucy'' was quite unintelligible to both Mrs. 
Vernon and me. Its significance was only too 
clear on the first of February when my faithful 
maid Lucie died after an operation for appendi- 
citis. The message with its '^gesture of de- 
spair '* was prophetic, and was also distinctly 
descriptive of the condition of the appendix 
which was in fact ' ^ taut, ' ' having grown around 
other organs, exactly as it was described in the 
message. 

On the morning of the Tuesday after her 
death, which was the day of her funeral, I saw 
Mrs. Vernon, who heard Lucie and my sister. 

My sister: *'Dear little Lucie. (Vision of 
fastening something around Lucie's neck like 
a clasp.) To be buried with her. A novitiate 
myself, I am glad to help Lucie. Am taking 
charge of Lucie, who preserves her attitude of 
respect. I am doing my best to help put through 
the messages." 

Mrs. Vernon heard: *' Lucie. Eevenir." 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 153 

Then followed a very intimate discussion 
about my household, with a request that I 
should be careful to whom I entrusted the key. 
The message about the clasp is very evidential ; 
a cross bearing the image of Christ had, un- 
known to me, been placed upon her breast, to be 
buried with her. 

On the morning of January the 29th my sister 
advised me in regard to my participation in a 
project for civic betterment which I had been 
asked to support. The meeting which I was 
to attend was fixed for the afternoon of this 
day. My conclusions and observations tallied 
exactly with my sister's prognostications. 

**Anna does not know whether to enroll in 
this or not. (Shows a woman sitting over a 
desk. ) Tell Anna not to enroll in this. ' ' (Pen- 
cil in hand striking out a name here and there.) 
* ' Not worth while — output of energy not worth 
while. Output outweighs the outcome, hardly 
worth while.'' 

(Do you know that I have seen your friend 
M.S. and that I agree with you about him?) 

^ ^ Fifty. I hated to be fifty ; this friend knows 
how I hated it. The replies he always made 
were consolatory. He said I had not grown old, 
so why should I grow old ? Yes, I know that you 
have seen him. This is a little test." 



154 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

The conversation here referred to took place 
between my sister and this admiring and loyal 
friend of her early youth not once bnt many 
times, according to his testimony. It had never 
been repeated to me. 

On February the 16th Mr. Edwin Friend, 
whose communications will be transcribed later, 
appeared and gave several very important 
tests. I then addressed my sister, saying that 
I hoped that she was receiving the thoughts of 
love which I was constantly sending to her. 

* * Tendrils of a flower, my garden ; not all sun- 
light, some shadow, more sunlight than shade, 
the garden of my memory. The shade repre- 
sents regrets; the sunlight represents the suc- 
cesses; among those successes I regard the 
holding of Anna's affection as preeminent. It 
was involuntary on Anna's part, given without 
measure; I perhaps wandered afield.'' 

(Do not ever be sorry again.) 

**I can never think of any other simile. 
Anna's love and affection are like a bulwark to 
me now. If I were back with the enlightenment 
I have now I never would have wandered afield. 
True love and affection do surely outweigh any 
exterior diversities. ' ' 

(What are you doing now?) 

^^ These tests are important; they are very 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 155 

important ; therefore, I have stood back. I am 
preparing a sort of reception hall for other re- 
cruits like myself, and remember it is all figura- 
tive, all mental, all spiritual; all milestones in 
the soul's development. It seems as if we must 
always lend a hand to some one beneath us; 
that is what I do. * ' 

At the next sitting, Mr. Friend again com- 
municated and in answer as to whether my sis- 
ter would be permitted to resume her narrative 
of her life after death he replied. 

** Pertinent to your sister, let me explain that 
her development has been augmented by her 
terrestrial communication, as it supplied her 
with the zest and interest which is frequently 
lacking in a newcomer. She is learning to pull 
wires herself, and is particularly proficient in 
the science of symbolic manifestations such as 
retinal hallucinations. ' ' 

My sister: *^I would like to have you show 
Anna mirror writing.'' 

Mrs. Vernon then got a mirror and wrote in 
reverse script a message. She wrote with great 
rapidity and without any knowledge of what 
she was writing. When the message was com- 
pleted she gave me the mirror and I read a 
most amusing and startlingly characteristic 
little note, unfortunately too intimate to be pub- 
lished, regarding matters of which Mrs. Vernon 



156 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

was completely ignorant. It was signed: *'I 
send you all my love ' ' — a very frequent method 
of ending her letters. 

(Are you making pretty things for your 
house?) 

** Mamma forf ended and saved me much time 
by planning for me a spiritual existence coin- 
cident with my tastes. For Anna she should 

arrange differently, for S differently again. 

Believe me that it is a help to have those who 
love us go before. Mental trends direct our 
ethereal existences. When materiality holds 
sway to the utter exclusion of all spiritual as- 
pirations, which is rare, there is a hopeless 
downward trend even here, which requires aeons 
of time to overcome. Such cases appear here 
seldom and are immediately withdrawn from 
our view, as the power of example is insidiously 
effective. ' ' 

Mother: **Our darling, is learning symbol- 
ism. The philosophy gave her an occupation. 
I decided to direct her along new lines ; making 
pretty things, doing useful things too.*' 

(What are they?) 

My sister : '*I am trying to teach in my turn 
spiritual tasks to others.'' 

(Have you learned enough to build a house?) 

^'It is a good deal as when you planned your 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 15T 

house; you thought it out. If we are expert 
enough our thoughts materialize." 

(What kind of a house have you made for 
yourself?) 

'^A very simple one as yet. I am again like 
a child under a father's roof. This thought 
realm is very difficult to translate into material 
ideas. '^ 

Between the sitting of February the 13th and 
that of the 18th, the announcement of Mr. 
Friend that my sister had become expert in 
^ ^ retinal hallucinations ' ' was illustrated. In my 
bed at night, with all lights extinguished for 
half an hour, I was waiting for sleep, when a 
medallion, small as a gold coin, bearing the ex- 
quisitely drawn image of her face appeared on 
the retina of my eyes. In a flash it was there, 
in an instant it was gone. It appeared to be 
definitely localized, exactly as when one has 
gazed on a bright light, and an image of that 
light has remained on the retina after the light 
has been extinguished and the eyelids are 
closed. On the following night I saw my own 
face, with equal distinctness and equally local- 
ized. Since that time I have seen musical in- 
struments, flowers in a garden, childishly drawn 
profiles and again many times my sister's face, 
although far less distinctly, and once her name 
in illuminated Roman script. 



158 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

When I saw Mrs. Vernon on the 18th of 
February she told me that she also had seen 
these medallions on the retina of her eyes and 
for the first time in her experience. 

When questioned regarding these medallions 
during one of the sittings when Mr. Friend com- 
municated, he said, ^^Eetinal sensibility is the 
most alert, as one might call the optic nerve one 
of the peripheries, therefore more easily 
reached. So it seemed worth while to us to 
attempt this form of addressing ourselves to 
Mrs. de Koven as other signals failed to reach 
her and in order to corroborate her statements 
we showed them to you. Your sister is learning 
under the direction of the scientific minds who 
assume authority in these proceedings. Some 
in this group you would call of the ancients. 
Skepticism in regard to this Imperator group 
is quite unfounded, as without them and their 
interest, these methods would never have been 
perfected. Moving-picture screen, with a lan- 
tern, so we throw pictures on your retinas." 

At the next sitting, after a lengthy communi- 
cation from Mr. Friend, Violet again appeared, 
showing herself in a very radiant guise, seem- 
ing very happy, and dressed in a beautiful gown 
of the Louis XV period, with petticoat and 
paniers. This description followed Mrs. Ver- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND'' 159 

non's vision, which was very minute in detail. 
(Are you happy, darling?) 

My sister: ^'I am happy over C (one of 

her children). If C can be made to see it 

over there, she will be spared a good deal of 
delay over here. I wish that Anna could see 
how lovely I look. (Mrs. Vernon remarked upon 
the blue and pink of her dress.) I am showing 
her my dress just as I used to show you my 
lovely things. I want you to know that I am 
much happier. I am interested in the pursuits 
over here, in the things they do. I also like the 
easy locomotion." 

(Won't you go on with your narrative?) 
'*I just came to say that I am happy, just as 
I used to be when I had my pretty things about 
me." 

(Have you anything more to say?) 
^*I have things to say ad infinitum, but it is 
better to be brief. I have reached the stage 
when the spiritual effluvia envelop and support 
me along their courses. Even Mamma is satis- 
fied and says that I have not done so badly. 
Papa protests, against too much duress as I 
am trying to do my best. Anna will remember 
how he would occasionally plead for us as chil- 
dren. 'Don't discipline the child too much; 
she is doing the best she can.' I am. I have 
tried very hard and I have learned in a childish 



160 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

way to manipulate the symbols. My first handi- 
work is this pretty dress. Highly fortunate in 
having highly developed masters. This is the 
power of a good background, tradition never 
belittles these things. Background of good 
sturdy character, people of high spiritual 
ideals, this counts for more over here than 
Anna and I thought. This is what counts here. 
It is more important than the other kind (of 
ancestry). The trouble with human kind is 
that they value the things that do not count. 
In conclusion I wiU say that Anna's present 
purposes are particularly congenial to us.'' 

At the next sitting I asked that my sister 
would continue her narrative and tell us what 
she is doing. 

*^I am picking up my loose ends and weaving 
them into a fairly presentable design. In other 
words I am trying to correlate a diversity of 
interests and planning them along spiritual 
lines. Due respect is paid over here to mental 
trends. Therefore my weaving may take the 
form of manufacturing pretty things for the 
benefit and pleasure of others as well as for 
myself. If one's tastes are musical it is per- 
mitted to extract sweet strains from symbolical 
instruments for the entertainment of those in- 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 161 

terested. If one writes that attainment may 
be perfected over here." 

(Are there libraries?) 

* * There is the library of the universe, the cos- 
mos to draw from. It all depends npon one's 
inclination, with the big element of self elimi- 
nated. ' ' 

(What have you been doing the last twenty- 
four hours, can you tell me?) 

* 'I have mastered the intricacies of a weaving 
machine, from which I have extricated a very 
involved design. I worked it out with patience. 
The patience was necessary to extricate the 
design. In this way spiritual development is 
interwoven. Concentration in your writing 
will stand you in good stead. Bearing of dis- 
appointments will also help. You asked me 
what I had been doing ; this is what I have been 
doing. A combination over here, by allowing 
us to continue our mental trends. If these 
trends are entirely material then Heaven help 
them over here. Mental, spiritual and moral 
effluxes directed by Divine instruction.'' 

(Is the sense of God's personality clearer 
than here?) 

*^Much clearer, as we are nearer the source. 
Except in the case of those who are striving to 
return to the earth. ' ' 

(We have difficulty in realizing it.) 



16^ A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

**A sort of Divine effulgence, penetrating the 
very fibers of those who are aware of its exist- 
ence and leaving untouched those who deny its 
existence. ^Seek ye first the Kingdom of God 
and his righteousness and all these things shall 
be added to you. ' It is like this. ' ' 

(Personality is so important here in our 
earthly training; there must be a source.) 

*^ Where we stand we feel the Divine efful- 
gence and that is all there is to it.'' 

(You do not seem to wish to be with people 
as much as you did on earth. You seem prin- 
cipally to be with your own family.) 

^ ' I played around with people a good deal. I 
am not with my family all the time. I am with 
masters and teachers who are willing to serve ; 
they teach me. ' ' 

(Have you seen soldiers'?) 

** Indeed, I have; they inhabit a realm pre- 
pared for them. The reason why the earth is 
inhabited by material people is because it is 
filled with people who have wanted to come back 
until they have developed to a certain point, 
then they do not wish to come back." 

(Do you want to come back?) 

*^I did very much at first; now I am not so 
sure. Mammals early training was really right. 
Her manner of delivering it was not as accept- 
able as it might have been, but she was right. 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 163 

Behold a caravan of exiles in a desert, white- 
garbed, sandal-footed, illuminated faces turned 
towards the east, with no more thought of their 
raiment than King Solomon ^s lilies. Trusting 
in Providence to provide manna, offering up 
prayers of thankfulness when an oasis appears 
in sight, with water and nourishment. These 
are true prophets, but extremists. Now the 
tableau changes and we present a woman 
clothed in the latest fashion, treading the prim- 
rose path of life, beloved, admired, envied per- 
haps, for her power, beauty and possessions, 
but with a soul as free from earthly entangle- 
ments as the crusaders of the first picture. ' ' 

(Is this you, dear?) 

^ ^ No, this is not I, in all humility ; my soul was 
not free from earthly entanglements. It is pure 
fancy. We simply meant to illustrate that one 
can have a soul free from earthly entangle- 
ments in the midst of earthly surroundings just 
as well as if one went wandering in the desert. 
No need to be extreme. Mamma was." 

During the progress of my sittings with Mrs. 
Vernon I occasionally tried the ouija board. 
Sometimes authentic messages seemed to be 
received, often subconscious vibrations were ap- 
parent, and sometimes only the magnetic force 
from the operators moved the board with no 
intelligent intention whatsoever. On the 22nd 



164 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

of February my daughter and I received what 
seemed to be a message from my sister. I 
record it, not because the subject of the message 
was very evidential, but because the rapidity of 
the motion of the board was very marked and 
definite and because my sister referred to her 
presence in a later sitting with Mrs. Vernon. 
First the board made circles, very rapidly. 
This sign, according to Margaret Cameron in 
her book the ''Seven Purposes,'' indicates 
union and love. ''Is this a message of loveT' 
I asked. The board moved instantly to "yes." 
' ' Is this you, dear T ' I asked. Again it traveled 
rapidly to "yes.'' Then referring to her bust 
in bronze which stands on a marble column in 
the corner of the library, I asked if she could 
see what was in the corner. The board then 
spelt out "bust." "Dear Ethel," "dear An- 
na," was then spelt out, and "Farewell." 

On February 25th, after a preliminary com- 
munication from Edwin Friend, Mrs. Vernon 
heard my sister's name. 

"I have brought my narrative up to date. I 
am progressive ; they say quickly. I will soon 
be able to impress or imprint words directly. 
(Shows a column and her own hand pointing 
to it.) I am glad Anna got my message of 
love." 

(Shall I go on with the ouija?) 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 165 

^*Yes. She will know that it is I, but don't 
be disappointed if the messages are inaccurate. 
Yes, I tried. Feel that I am there and be pa- 
tient with my efforts. ' * 

(Does it make you happier to feel that you 
can make your presence felt directly?) 

*^0h! the difference would be as great as if 
one was obliged to travel along in a tunnel and 
see only the roof instead of the blue sky. The 
difference in speaking to her directly is like a 
little bird, as if the little bird had a broken 
wing instead of being perfect and normal and 
could fly." 

(Are you happy now?) 

*^Yes, much happier. You can consider that 
I am happy. At least I am calm." 

(Have you companionship which is pleasant 
to you?) 

*^I enjoy the fleeting moments with my 
brother, the long talks with my mother, the rec- 
ords of my father's peregrinations, all these. 
Then I have the privilege of watching the tapes- 
try weavers and the lace makers." 

(Do these tapestries and laces last?) 

* ^ As long as we want them. You can hold the 
thought and they remain. I was more inter- 
ested in these things than in music or art. 
There is a diversity of spirits who entertain 



166 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

and beguile "witli their pleasant personalities on 
earth. So they do here.'' 

(Is the ethereal world which you inhabit near 
here or is it very far away?) 

'^Near or far as thought travels. I have not 
departed from the terrestrial ether. My inter- 
est lies here. Later I will explore and enter 
the pennmbra of the other planets. I will take 
up my narrative later. ' ' 

On March the 15th I asked my sister if she 
played cards in the other world. 

*^ Games of that description lose their test 
when we can read our opponent's minds. It is 
like outgrown children's toys, outgrown child- 
ish things. They are good for the brain on 
earth. I am more interested in these little me- 
dallions. (Shows one to Mrs. Yernon.) You 
might almost call me a numismatist. Don't be- 
little cards, but over here we can read each 
other's minds and over here there are things 
much more interesting. ' ' 

(I am very grateful to have the opportunity 
of expressing your thoughts which I intend to 
do later.) 

' ' Anna 's monument to me. My memorial. ' ' 

(If I have helped you over there by continu- 
ing these communications it is my greatest joy 
and consolation.) 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 167 

**Tou have, indeed, and with the greatest rev- 
erence I bow before such serious effort. I 
would never have had any patience with it on 
earth. The convolutions of destiny are so curi- 
ous. That one should without intention have 
helped their fellows, without really consciously 
intending it. You have helped me because you 
and Mrs. Vernon are so interested. I have 
helped you. So we are interwoven.^' 

(I do not feel as if I had been separated from 
you, darling; I have tried to live with you.) 

''So it has really transpired that we have 
been together. I have been brought to see that 
commerce in souls is the offshoot of an unde- 
veloped condition, and therefore not to be 
harshly criticized, but prevented when possible, 
as it leads nowhere and causes a really serious 
disintegration. It seems frivolous, it is more 
than that; it really is more serious. Anna 
understands that she should prevent it when 
possible. She has prevented it. In a way I am 
almost glad that I came over here. I don 't know 
if Anna can really understand that it is I, when 
I say that I am almost glad to have come over 
here. I see the meaning of it all. At first I 
could not say it, I longed so to come back, but 
now I am almost glad to have come over here." 



168 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

On March the 25th I spoke aloud to my sister 
saying that our other sister was missing her 
very much these days. 

*^She misses me. I know she misses me." 

(If I could only see you or feel your presence 
directly.) 

^'1 preside at the ouija, too, but cannot al- 
ways control the conditions. Anna has not 
seen the medallions lately.'' 

(I have tried to see them; what is the mat- 
ter?) 

^^ You have to grab at them. Sometimes con- 
ditions are favorable, sometimes not. I knew 
Anna was disappointed; that is why I spoke 
of them." 

(Where are you now; in what part of the 
room?) 

Mrs. Vernon said that she had perceived my 
sister seated in the chair next to her, while she 
was communicating. Now Mrs. Vernon said, 
''She is standing near the lamp, running her 
fingers through the fringe. Now she has come 
to the table where you are writing; is leaning 
over it with both hands resting on it." 

Mrs. Vernon heard: *'Dear Anna, her hand 
gets so tired, but she goes on just the same." 

Mrs. Vernon saw tears in my sister's eyes 
and saw her putting her hand over mine. 

(I would not be separated from you.) 



"THE PERFECT ROUND" 169 

**And so here I am. It is an anniversary 
time and therefore a little more soul stirring 
even than usual. You have tried so hard to do 
everything just as I would have done. I thank 
you for your devotion.'' 

On the 1st of April, I asked my sister if she 
would come some night and speak with Mrs. 
Horton and me with the ouija board. 

*^Any night when you and Marguerite are 
together. I will try. ' ' 

(How do you send for any one? Mrs. B.'s boy, 
for instance?) 

*^ Thought waves; currents of concentration 
of the waves and currents. Controls around 
a medium sense approaching conditions. The 
sitters bring their friends." 

(Is it because you can read thoughts that you 
can prophesy!) 

^^On the plan that coming events cast their 
shadows before. The embryo must form some- 
where, and we see the process." 

(Do you mean the embryo of thought?) 

**Yes. The embryo of thought when the 
event is planned as a snowball has to be formed 
into a ball. The recipient gets the ball without 
thinking of the process of formation." 

(These are the days of our agony when you 
were passing from our sight.) 



170 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

^^You must forget them and think of my 
resurrection.^' 

(It is a great grief.) 

''Yes, also affection. I could point out the 
compensation that exists in the correlation of 
individuals, which creates happiness or unhap- 
piness for our brothers and sisters. We can- 
not rid ourselves of our obligations to each 
other. We do not suffer alone. When we 
spread happiness it is not alone. Your love 
which has brought us together has not stopped 
there. You have spread it and humanity bene- 
fits — does not stop in a selfish gratification. All 
your love for me is of use. Try and see the 
broad side of it even in this. The poor soul 
who came here yesterday went away with com- 
fort.'' 

This refers to the comforting messages re- 
ceived by a friend from her son, and to the fact 
that I had arranged the meeting with Mrs. 
Vernon. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Investigatoks 

DURING the month of April, Mr. Friend 
communicated to the almost entire exclu- 
sion of my sister. At the end of the sitting of 
May the 1st, on the eve of my departure for 
Hot Springs, Va., she very sweetly expressed 
her concern for my health. 

* ' Let me say ^ Au revoir, ' dear Anna ; do not 
exhaust yourself reducing, let it come gradu- 
ally.'' 

(Are you happy now?) 

* ' It is cumulative ; it grows as it goes, so they 
tell me, until one reaches the acme of bliss." 

At Hot Springs, the medallions often ap- 
peared upon my eyes and I received a message 
from my sister, through a friend, who has the 
gift of automatic handwriting. The message 
is so characteristic of my sister and so indica- 
tive of her development, that I include it in my 
records. The guiding control of this friend 
first moved her hand, which wrote with great 
rapidity and witj^out correction or hesitation. 

^^You have been able to open up a different 

171 



172 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

vision to Mrs. Anna de Koven. She has fol- 
lowed a very definite line, which has been laid 
down by her guides and her loved ones to help 
her, as her clear point of view will help you. It 
is our desire that all the circles should at some 
time merge into one. At the present that is 
difficult, as it is extremely hard for the human 
brain (not the immortal mind) to grasp this 
great truth, that every point of view, every 
message, and every belief that is guided from 
this side is not diverse in its teachings, but 
merely a part of the great whole and necessary 
to make the circle complete. We of your circle 
and those of Anna de Koven 's circle are beside 
you now and the current is extremely strong 
and easy. You are all surrounded by great 
love. 

*^I have a message to deliver to Anna de 
Koven from her sister. 

^^ Since you have been down here you have 
allowed your heart to grow in grief. Try, 
dearest, to shake off the feeling of blankness, 
for I am content in the aura of your love, and 
altho you cannot see me except at moments 
(this may mean the pictures of her face on the 
medallions — A. de K.) surely you realize my 
nearness. Not only that, but you have been 
much favored by the great souls in the work 
which has been given you to do, and you can- 



THE INVESTIGATORS 173 

not do it justice with a sore and aching heart. 
Feel your soul expand with love and tenderness, 
not only for those so near and dear to us both, 
but for every living creature you are going to 
benefit by your hand. Exude love through 
every word of the coming book. Let the light 
of real faith shine forth from your eyes. It is 
a challenge, dearest Anna, from the masters, 
^to arms.' If you wish to stand behind our 
words, you must by your joy in my release, for 
it was strictly that, show your happiness in my 
nearness. It is always a positive fact that in 
communications through a conscious or an un- 
conscious mind our words are somewhat col- 
ored by that mind and we must needs use the 
instrument, such as vocabulary, etc., to express 
ourselves, but I speak, and you must and do 
recognize my words. I send greetings to you 

M and thank you, D — — , for your hand; 

it is a great pleasure to write for you. I shall 
benefit by the acquaintance of the masters of 
this circle, as there is unlimited knowledge 
over here on all subjects, and the more I learn, 
the more I shall have to give you, dearest 
Anna. Once more, I want to warn you not to 
be sad, for you make me sad in your sadness. 
There is much for you to do in life and we are 
co-workers, and nearer in many ways than we 
should ever have been able to be on earth. God 



174 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

bless you, darling, I love this and could con- 
tinue, but have said my say. (In answer to a 
question about my grandchild.) Do not be 
distressed about him. He is being helped by 
one of the Investigators, and when I am not 
with you I see him and of course glimpse the 
others, too. He will be better soon, but you are 
not to worry. You must strive to realize that 
God^s love and knowledge is better and far 
wiser than even mine with its growth of vision 
here on this plane. Embrace the love of God. 
Your love makes a pure ray of light straight 
from your heart to mine, no matter where I am 
or what I am doing. I am always conscious 
of your love and that is why it hurts me when 
I cannot make my love as concrete to you as 
yours is to me. God bless you, darling; be 
brave, for you have much to do. ' ' 

The evidential point in this message is con- 
tained in the reference to the ^^Investigators'' 
and their care of my grandchild. The group 
of four men who call themselves the ^^Investi- 
gators,'' includes Mr. John L. Ticknor of 
Bridgeport, New York, who is, in Dr. Hyslop's 
opinion, a medium of very remarkable powers. 
He possesses clairvoyance and clairaudience 
in a very high degree, and in trance has given 
a volume of important information and mes- 



THE INVESTIGATORS 175 

sages of proved veracity. Some one of the 
group of his * ^ controls ' ^ has, according to this 
message, undertaken to watch over my grand- 
child. This idea was not a part of my con- 
sciousness or of the friends who received the 
message. She had never heard of the ^^ Investi- 
gators.'^ 

Founded for the purpose indicated by their 
name, the small ^^ Society of Investigators," 
who are all business men holding positions of 
trust, has had a remarkable experience through 
association with Mr. Ticknor, who was at one 
time an assistant manager of a railroad and is 
now a bond merchant. Mr. Ticknor, who is the 
son of an Episcopal clergyman, inherited his re- 
markable powers from his mother. Since 
childhood he has seen discarnate spirits, and, 
unaware that others were unable to see them, 
was warned by his mother against mentioning 
his powers to his companions. At an amateur 
seance, conducted by one of his friends he fell 
asleep and rising to his feet delivered an elo- 
quent discourse regarding the constitution of 
the other world to his amazed companions. 
The spirit of an officer in the Civil war, Col. 
Horace Clark Lee, had for the first time en- 
tranced Mr. Ticknor. 

Col. Lee was found to have existed in the 
flesh, and to have occupied an official position 



176 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

subsequent to the war at Springfield, the home 
of one of the Investigators. Col. Lee's signa- 
ture, as given by himself, while in possession 
of Mr. Ticknor, has been identified. It is pre- 
cisely similar to that on the public documents 
at Springfield. 

Busy and successful as Mr. Ticknor is in his 
worldly occupations, he can only spare two 
evenings in each month for the practice and 
demonstration of his remarkable powers. One 
of these evenings is fixed for the middle of 
each month in Springfield and the other for the 
first Saturday in each month in New York. I 
was present at the March meeting in New York 
and again on April the 5th. I saw Mr. Ticknor 
fall into trance, and rise to his feet as Col. Lee. 
In life Col. Lee possessed considerable orator- 
ical gifts and on both occasions when I have 
heard him discourse, he has discussed the state 
of the soul before and after its earthly incarna- 
tion. The complete change of personality, the 
use of long and carefully composed sentences, 
the characteristic pauses and gestures of the 
trained orator were extremely impressive to 
me, who had never before witnessed the phe- 
nomenon of trance possession. 

After the conclusion of Col. Lee's discourses 
another personality possesses Mr. Ticknor, 
Black Hawk, an Indian, who has given a strik- 



THE INVESTIGATORS 177 

ingly picturesque account of his earthly life in 
Canada. Unlike Col. Lee, Black Hawk never 
discourses about the problems of eternal life, 
but conveys to those present at the meetings 
messages from numbers of spirit visitors, who 
come to speak with their friends. That no 
knowledge of these two personalities was pos- 
sessed by Mr. Ticknor prior to their appear- 
ance in this extraordinary invasion of his own 
organisms, is as indubitable as Mr. Ticknor 's 
unquestioned honesty, as attested by all who 
know him. Black Hawk is humorous, speaks 
with a curious accent, borrowed from the 
French Canadian woodsmen, and is quite as 
definite a personality as Col. Lee. 

The small current expenses of the Society of 
Investigators are borne by the four men who 
compose it and their only desire is that those 
who attend the meetings should do so in the 
spirit of honest investigation which they them- 
selves exemplify. 

Mr. Ticknor himself with Mr. Fell and two 
brothers Sutton are the four members of the 
association, and neither Mr. Ticknor nor his 
friends of the society accept any remuneration 
for his demonstrations for any purpose what- 
soever. A very large number of ^Hests*' of 
the truthfulness of the messages received 
by him are contained in the records which 



178 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

are stenographically taken at each meeting. 

At the meeting of April the 5th held in my 
own house, my sister and our parents appeared 
and the former's message to me was given by 
the voice of Black Hawk, with a striking imita- 
tion of her own accents of tenderness and affec- 
tion. 

Black Hawk: ^* There is a spirit here, your 
sister" (pointing to me). 

(Yes. How does she look?) 

Black Hawk : * * She goes to you and she says, 
*Anna, do you remember this day last year?' '' 

(She knows that I remember.) 

Black Hawk: ^'She says, ^What a wonderful 
year it has been for me, this last year. I am 
satisfied.' " 

Black Hawk: *'She fades away. She is a 
woman, not like you, older." 

(She is younger.) 

Black Hawk: *^Her hair is grayer than yours. 
The same eyes." 

On April the 7th, when I asked through Mrs. 
Vernon if she had been present on the 5th of 
April, which was in fact the anniversary of her 
death, my sister replied: 

* ^ Yes, of course, I was there. He got it mixed 
up. He saw Mamma ; he got my message cor- 
rectly; we were both there; he described 
Mamma. ' ' 



THE INVESTIGATORS 179 

On April the 20th, in a private sitting with 
Mr. Ticknor at Bridgeport, my sister spoke 
with the utmost freedom and with apparent 
pleasure in the easy mode of communication 
through the entranced medium. 

This method is apparently easier than that 
which Mrs. Vernon's mediumship provides, 
probably because of the immediate presence of 
the possessing spirit, with whom the communi- 
cator can speak directly. 

Black Hawk: '^Your sister is here; she says, 
*You sent a messenger for me. I was in my 
home in the West. So nice that we can speak 
in this way. A year ago I could not speak, and 
now I am here and I can speak, not directly yet, 
but I will be able to do so later. Father and 
Mother are with me and we are happy together. 
What month is itr '^ 

(It is April.) 

^ ' Oh, yes ! It was in April that I died. It 
has really been a wonderful year. It was so 
wonderful when I died. I want you to know 
about my illness. The operation was delayed 
too long. He soon told me and then it was too 
late. It developed into pneumonia. It was 
not that which caused my death. It was due to 
septic poisoning due to many things which I 
should not have done.'' 

(Was it the antrum?) 



180 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

^^Yes, it was that.'' 

(Oh! my darling, why did you neglect it?) 

**Do not think any more about it. It was 
harder for me than for you. Now, what I 
want to say, it is all over and I am just getting 
to be at peace. I wish you could have been 
with me at the end. I knew I was going, I felt 
it through me, I hated it. The weather was so 
exquisite and I loved my sea-side home.'' 

(How does she look. Black Hawk?) 

Black Hawk: ^^She is about forty-seven or 
forty-eight. Yes, my girl, I have guessed your 
age. She is tall and slender. Her hair is 
lighter than yours and her eyes. She has a 
very pretty nose and a pretty mouth. A lovely 
woman. She is dressed in a light sport 
sweater; she gave me that, I would not have 
known what to call it." 

(I love you always.) 

** Don't cry any more at night. I would like 
to talk about your books. Make it in two vol- 
umes, books of an ordinary size. Put in one 
the messages you have received from me and 
the others in the second. Make a running com- 
ment. If something happens one day and the 
next week something happens which agrees 
with it, explain it. ' ' 

(Where are you living?) 

*^In a house like our old home. Much like 



THE INVESTIGATORS 181 

it only the grounds are more extensive. I am 
living there with Papa and Mamma/' 

(Who built this house?) 

■'^Papa built if' 

(Is it very far away?) 

*^Not very far. I am getting weaker now 
and must go. Not up or down; it is out. I 
don 't know exactly where ; when I leave you I 
go there." 

Black Hawk: *^ There is a man here and he 
says his name is F., and he wants to speak to 
Anna. ' ' 

F. : **I am very much pleased. Your sister 
is with us and is doing very nicely." 

Then follows some advice about a book I had 
been writing, ending with the characteristic 
advice to ^^try it" in a small place first, on the 
principle of trying it on the dog. 

(Are you with me often?) 

^^Yes, your house seems large to me. You 
know my taste was simple. Not exactly my 
idea of a home." 

(I do not find it so. I built that big room 
for musicians.) 

^'It is a fine room. 

(What are you doing?) 

*^I am organizing a scheme of commerce. 
America should rule the world. Germany's 
power is finished. I belong to a committee of 



18^ A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ten, six of whom are Illinois men. We are plan- 
ning commercial relations with. Canada and 
Mexico. There is also a large field in South 
America. The United States must rule. Your 
sister is happy. She came suddenly, unexpect- 
edly even to us. Suddenly even to us. She is 
doing well. I was fortunate in having beauti- 
ful children." 

The attitude of special kindness to the poor 
and lowly which my father always maintained 
was in some way perceived by the strange 
speaker in this remarkable interview. 

Black Hawk : * ^ That is a very fine old gentle- 
man. People don't want to speak with an In- 
dian, but not this man. He be kind to Black 
Hawk and Black Hawk remembers. Eemem- 
ber, — God came to the poor man. The God of 
Love came from above to help the working man. 
Love alone you cannot buy. God and love you 
can always have." 

After my father's departure, the father of 
the friend who accompanied me came to speak 
with her, and when he also, saying that he was 
getting weaker and could not stay with us, de- 
parted on his way. Black Hawk appealed to us 
to speak with him. 

Black Hawk: *^I want to talk with you. It 
is pleasant for me to talk. Ask Black Hawk 
some questions." 



THE INVESTIGATORS 183 

(Tell us about yourself.) 

'^My father was a chief, and his squaw was 
of the Hurons. They went south to the Huron 
country. My father was killed and my mother 
came back a long way, carrying me when I was 
a little red baby. She reached over to get 
some water, leaving me on the bank of the river. 
She fell in and was drowned. Some braves 
came along after a while and found me. They 
saw the sacred mark on my body of the chief- 
tain's child and took me, after a while, to my 
father's country, where I was brought up." 

(Where is that country?) 

* ^ It was called Fort Gerry, up north, what you 
call Winnipeg. I grew up tall and strong, and 
one day I made a journey to a post, and there 
by the house I saw the factor's daughter, Alice 
McDonald. Her father, a Scotchman. He 
did not want to do with Indian, but she loved 
me (Black Hawk strikes his breast), and we 
were marry. We went to live in a bungalow 
together by the side of a lake. ' ' 

(You were happy then, Black Hawk?) 

*^Yes, but after a while she died. I buried 
her at night by the side of the lake. The moon 
was shining over the mountain. I got a soldier 
to cut her name on the wooden cross. * Alice 
McDonald, Black Hawk's Squaw, Little Com- 
rade.' I covered her grave with moss and 



184 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

stones and it is there yet unless it be taken 
away. Little comrade, little comrade! Then 
I went back to nature, and nature took me. No- 
body ever took Black Hawk but nature. I had 
a disease called Tuburcu — Hemo — you know, I 
coughed blood. I did not want to live, I used 
to strike my breast to bring them on, and so I 
died. I was Indian and I tried to be something 
else and I was nothing, nothing! 

*' Huron or Athabascan, the Indians have vi- 
sion, but they are not strong enough to put it 
through. My people have the vision but no 
strength (gesture of much force and eloquence), 
no force to put it through. '* 

(We know that you have a kind heart, Black 
Hawk, and that you like to help us.) 

Black Hawk (modestly) : ^^I have learned to 
speak better English. At first, when I took 
what you call * possession' of this man, I could 
not make myself understood, but now I have 
learned. ' ' 

(Is it by speaking with the people of the 
earth?) 

^^Yes, and I go to school also. I have helped 
in this war by talking English to those soldiers 
who were with the Canadians. '^ 

(Will the troubles in the Old World ever fin- 
ish?) 



THE INVESTIGATORS 185 

**Yes, everything changes, nothing lasts. 
Everything must change.'' 

(There is so much cruelty; so many poor peo- 
ple killed.) 

^*I do not know whether that is cruel. It is 
not so bad to be rid of a poor garment. Do 
not think that that is so bad. ' ' 

During this long conversation with the living 
dead, my friend had continually called for her 
husband. Her grandmother and great-aunt, 
whom she had not known in If e, came and prom- 
ised to send for him. Her father also was 
asked to help in the search, and still he did not 
come. Finally, speaking in Indian, Black Hawk 
ordered his messengers, who he said were al- 
ways near him, to go out and find him. He 
asked for the exact number of the street in 
which he had lived and the number and street 
of my friend's present residence. Then at last, 
after a few more minutes of waiting, he ex- 
claimed with delighted satisfaction : 

^ ' Now, I see a man. He is like ' ' 

Then followed an exact description of the 
earthly appearance of my friend's husband, 
who had at last answered to the call. The con- 
versation which ensued between this husband 
and wife was far too intimate to be recorded by 
me, who was the reverent listener to protesta- 
tions of undying love, a love as fresh and ardent 



186 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

as in life and expressed in careful and authori- 
tative answers to questions as to the health and 
training of their children — full of help to their 
mother and showing that he never was uncon- 
scious of their varying conditions, never re- 
laxed his watchful care. So ended this won- 
derful meeting in which, whatever may have 
been its source or origin in whatever mysteri- 
ous laws, we felt that we had really been talk- 
ing in perfect familiarity with the departed. 

On the 28th of June I saw Mrs. Vernon in 
Manchester, Vermont, when my sister again 
communicated, telling me more of her develop- 
ment. 

^ ' I am very different from what I was when 
I last spoke to you. I see now that the things 
I cared most about are not worth while. I 
would have laughed if any one had said so when 
I was alive. I have not lost my humor, but I 
am getting an idea of the purpose of creation. 
Mamma 's conversation now interests me ; Anna 
would be amused. It is not as it was in the 
old days when I would not listen. I have a 
profound gratitude to Anna, she provided me 
with an occupation. She kept me in touch with 
the world I had lost. One cannot lose all one 
held dear so suddenly. It was like looking 
down into a great dark cavern. I was lost ; sud- 



THE INVESTIGATORS 187 

denly out of the dark, Anna appeared. It was 
my salvation.'' 

(It was mine also.) 

* ^ There is a group here who are interested in 
this communication, but the majority of people 
over here are just as ignorant of it as those on 
earth. It is of infinite as well as of finite im- 
portance.'' 

(Did you send me that message through Mrs. 
C— — and Mrs. W at Hot Springs?) 

'^I did try and they did well. Different me- 
dium and different method. ' ' 

Another message from my sister remains to 
be recorded. It came through Black Hawk, 
when at the July meeting he spoke through Mr. 
Ticknor. I was not present at this meeting. 

^^My knowledge is increasing daily in this 
wonderful place, this wonderful land. 

'^I have been here little over a year now. I 
have communicated on several occasions with 
my loved ones, particularly my dear Anna. She 
was very precious to me. 

^^I assisted in the writing of several books 
of travel, of description, and here I am in this 
wonderful land, seeing wonderful things, really 
a new Heaven and a new Earth. I am anxious 
to write a book and tell the people of your world 
of all the wonderful things, strange and mar- 
velous sights and scenes which I know about. 



188 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

My husband enjoyed the credit for the books 
and rightly so. 

^'Sometime I wish to be the author of a book 
which is read in your world and which people 
may enjoy," 

Question: ^'When would you like to write 
it?" 

Answer: *'I am getting notes together now. 
I would like to give it to Anna." 

Question: *'Can Mrs. de Koven do auto- 
matic writing?" 

Answer: ^'Not now. I may be able to com- 
municate with her otherwise. Father did well 
by us. He was always very kind to us. Dear 
Father is with me now. Tell Anna that I love 
her and that I have sent word through you to 
her now." 

(We will write out what you have said and 
give it to her.) 

' ' Thank you. Good night. ' ' 

The high evidentiality of this message rests 
with the fact that Mr. Ticknor was absolutely 
ignorant, as were all but the immediate mem- 
bers of our family, that my sister had assisted 
in suggestion and criticism in the writing of 
her husband's books. 

The development in my sister both mentally 
and spiritually since her residence in the other 
world must be evident to all readers of her 



THE INVESTIGATORS 189 

communications. I cannot too often insist 
upon the clarity of her mind. It was in fact 
the foundation of her excellent judgment, of 
her impatience with undue complaint, which 
rendered her advice on all matters which were 
brought to her of invaluable worth. 

Her self-reproach for her life of helpfulness 
through joy, expresses her present rigidly clear 
perception that she had been too occupied in 
the happiness of her wonderfully unclouded 
years to develop her mental powers. The 
school she learned in was that of happiness, but 
those lessons were by no means used for her 
own personal gratification solely, but were ex- 
tended to each and every one who came within 
the radiant circle of her acquaintance. At early 
morning she was at the telephone arranging, 
during many hours, for the occupations and 
pleasures of those who looked to her for daily 
direction, so that sometimes she was far more 
exhausted than she realized. Decision, firm and 
lucid, she brought to the training of her chil- 
dren. As a mother she was well-nigh faultless, 
both in sympathy and control. One and all, 
those who knew her were content to share her 
sunlight, feeling that one hour with her was 
worth any sacrifice of other occupations, and a 
willing compliance with her desires. 

So she lived through her earthly existence, 



190 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

and now in this new and continuing life, she 
prepares, according to this last message, to ex- 
press the hitherto undeveloped powers of mind 
and spirit which are part of her remarkable 
endowment. 



CHAPTEE VII 

Mk. Edwin Fkiend 

THE reason for the adoption of Mrs. Vernon 
as a medium for the transmission of their 
messages, and an approved agent for the pros- 
ecution of their purpose of establishing the fact 
of communication by the group of discarnate 
members of the Societies for Psychical Re- 
search in England and America, does not seem 
far to seek. The friend who accompanied Mr. 
Edwin Friend on his fateful voyage on the Lusi- 
tania had been closely associated with the Amer- 
ican Society and was a friend of Dr. Hodgson. 
Edwin Friend had been prepared to devote his 
whole time to the interests of the American 
Society, and was, as has been before stated, in 
the act of carrying a large number of Mrs. Ver- 
non's records to the English Society when he 
was lost with the Lusitania. 

Only once, when Mr. Myers made his appre- 
ciative comments about my sister, has any mem- 
ber of this group other than Mr. Friend com- 
municated by name with Mrs. Vernon, although 

191 



192 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

on several occasions they have said that Dr. 
Hodgson and Prof. James and Mr. Myers were 
always present to aid in the communications. 
They have also said that they ' ^ came over tre- 
mendously interested in this thing and have kept 
at it as it is the only thing which lasts.'' 

They have also commented upon the favor- 
able condition arising from the intense and mu- 
tual desire of my sister and myself to keep in 
touch with each other. They, apparently, im- 
mediately adopted her into their delightful cir- 
cle of ^^ merriment and light-heartedness, " 
teaching her how to speak along the electric 
thought wires they knew so well how to estab- 
lish and have warmly praised her as a *^ won- 
derful communicator." 

Their messages, which I will now transcribe, 
are given in an invariably scholarly style and 
contain much valuable information regarding 
the methods of communication, the construction 
of the ethereal world, the process of trance pos- 
session, and the phenomenon of materialization. 

Mr. Friend is always the spokesman. 

A few days prior to the sitting of January the 
29th I had visited Dr. Titus Bull, in his ofBce. I 
had never before seen him and he did not inform 
me of his acquaintance with Mr. Friend or of 
any connection or personal interest in the Amer- 
ican Society for Psychical Eesearch. 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 193 

Edwin Friend: ^'Dr. Bull, Obsessions, wMch 
Dr. Bull treats. Tell Dr. Bull to pull wires on 
which he has laid hold. He is trying to build 
up an organization, an institution. I think he 
will be able to bring this about. Reports, super- 
numerary. 

^'I was considered a supernumerary. (Humor- 
ously not satirically.) I want you to tell Dr. 
Bull that the supernumerary is working just as 
hard from his side as he (Dr. Bull) is from his." 

Mrs. Vernon remarked at this point that the 
language used by Mr. Friend was much more 
simple than that which his wife heard when she 
received messages. 

^ ^ Now, if you want big words. The subjective 
or subliminal is paramount to the active con- 
sciousness in cases where the nerve ganglia ex- 
ceed or outweigh tissue in the penumbra of the 
brain. ^ ' 

(Is the other world entirely idealistic, or is 
it a world where ideals work creatively on the 
ether?) 

* ' Your world is matter manipulated by brains. 
Look at the forests. Wood has to be cut from 
them to make houses and furniture. Look at 
the coal mines. Coal has to be dug to cause 
heat. These are manipulated by thought and 
all these elements exist in the ether. Look at 
this perfectly warmed room heated by coal. 



194 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Nothing is manipulated without the force of 
mentality. ' ' 

(Do the ether forms make a practically solid 
world?) 

^'In your world our brains control our hands 
through manual effort. In our world here, brain 
force acts directly on matter." 

(Why is there not inextricable confusion 
when so many people are creating things?) 

^ ' There is such a thing as an individual orbit, 
and in that orbit appear only those things which 
the individual desires. Eemember, we are 
speaking of developed souls. Undeveloped 
souls have very little ability to create. They 
are led and guided.'' 

(Do the houses and temples of learning made 
by the advanced spirits remain for the use of 
those who are less advanced?) 

**The most ancient of earthly antiquities is 
modem in comparison to this.'' (Shows a vi- 
sion of a Greek temple, with many beautiful de- 
tails, such as scrollwork and carved capitals.) 

(Do the landscapes made by the advancecj 
spirits also remain for indefinite periods?) 

^^We have at our disposal the landscapes of 
all the planets. But the sun shines for all, the 
sea sparkles for all, and the swaying trees give 
forth, or contribute (correction by Mr. Friend), 
their essence to the cosmos, awaiting the divine 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 195 

touch, of the manipulator. Don't worry over 
the lack of permanency. We have these as long 
as we want them. They are more permanent 
than on earth. Desire makes the permanency. 
Shows the importance of controlling our de- 
sires. Desire the right thing and keep it. ' ' 

Dr. Bull has treated certain nervous cases on 
the assumption that they were obsessed or ac- 
companied by evil or earthbound spirits. His 
success has been great with the class of patients 
who manifest marked abnormal tendencies, and 
he has, in certain instances, been able to iden- 
tify these evil entities, when he has brought his 
patients into the presence of a certain well- 
known medium, who has been able to see them 
clairvoyantly. 

Sometimes the evil personalities have been 
persuaded to leave the patients and cure has 
been effected. Dr. Bull's experiments have an 
important bearing upon the cases of so-called 
multiple or disassociated personalities, and 
illustrate the theory, now held by some, that 
certain types of insanity are actually traceable 
to the influence of evil spirits. 

To found an institution for the treatment of 
these cases is Dr. Bull's desire, as Mr. Friend 
stated. The message of Mr. Friend contains 
two excellent *^ tests." Neither Mrs. Vernon nor 
I had any knowledge that Dr. Bull had known 



196 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

him in life, nor did we imagine what the refer- 
ence to the ^^supernumerary" could mean until 
Dr. Bull quite clearly explained it. 

On February the 11th on the eve of a visit to 
Boston, where Mrs. Friend now lives, I said to 
Mr. Friend that I would be glad to take a mes- 
sage to her. 

*^It would be an ineffable comfort to Mar- 
gery. The baby, rompers buttoned tightly 
around the waist — ^baby growing fat, blooming. 
Thank some one for the good care taken of the 
baby. Proud of something Margery has done. 
Investment. Dr. Worcester hurried into a de- 
cision to sell something; can't he turn the lock? 
These tests are important, although differing 
from the scientific discussions sometimes given 
to Mrs. Vernon. You can write these scientific 
things, we can give them to you if you want 
them. But in this philosophy the most scien- 
tific things are the tests." 

When in Boston I saw Mrs. Friend and her 
mother as well as Dr. Worcester. All the 
*^ tests" were successful. The baby's waist- 
band had grown too tight, the nurse deserved 
the father's gratitude, Mrs. Friend had made 
an investment in Life Insurance, and Dr. 
Worcester admitted that he had sold something 
he valued, and had on more than one occasion 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 197 

left his front door unlocked with dangerous con- 
sequences. 

Having seen at Dr. BulPs office a photograph 
on an X-ray plate, taken in total darkness and 
without any apparatus, which recorded ad- 
hesions in the body of a patient, I was curious 
to know if radio-activity in the human body 
could make photographs. This idea led to the 
question which I put to Mr. Friend at the sitting 
of February the 21st. 

(Is an excess of radio-activity added to the 
excess of nerve ganglia in the brain of a psy- 
chic?) 

^*A certain displacement in the psychic's 
brain which does not occur in ordinary brains. 
Water-nebulous material-penumbra, more of 
this in ordinary brains than in the psychic's 
brain. Less penumbra and more solid sub- 
stance. Nerve ganglia cannot run through the 
penumbra unprotected; they are covered with 
matter, protected, insulated like an electric wire 
in a house. So the ganglia are protected by 
matter. In a substance like calves' brains go 
the ganglia. As there are more ganglia in a 
psychic's brain, therefore there is more matter 
to protect the ganglia. Therefore the brain 
is heavier in a psychic. If more nerves, then 
more matter in the brain." 

(Is there more radio-activity?) 



198 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

''There is more radio-activity, more concen- 
trated radio-activity, more concentrated in the 
psychic's brain. The same amount in all brains. 
All the qualities exist in the magnet but they 
attract only steel. Therefore the quality in the 
psychic's brain we ^\ill try to define. Two 
pieces of wood struck together give no result ; 
two pieces of stone struck together and we have 
a spark. (Shows a piece of silver tarnished as 
if it had stood before a furnace.) Set this piece 
of silver in the window and it gives very little 
radiation, but rub it up, and it gives forth tre- 
mendous light in the sun rays. The psychic- 
nerve ganglia have been rubbed down by extra 
nervousness until they become reflecting or re- 
sponsive. Excessive alcohol drinking causes 
brain deterioration ; this is well known. There- 
fore the pursuit of pleasures exhausting to the 
nervous system results in the burning up of the 
tissues surrounding the ganglia and therefore 
the protecting encasement wears thin, exposing 
the sensitive vibrating nerves to passing vibra- 
tions. ' ' 

(Is thought a form of electricity?) 
"Electricity is the conductor of thought.'* 
(What is the difference between the conductor 
and the thought?) 

' ' Thought is the essence of spiritual and men- 
tal activity, playing upon the physical or the 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 199 

natural, the brain by means of electrical cur- 
rents, there not here. It plays upon the phys- 
ical part of the brain, transported by electrical 
currents. ' ' 

(How are you getting along with your ma- 
chine?) 

This was the psychic telegraph of which a 
partial description has been several times given 
to Mrs. Vernon. 

*^Alas! that machine, I can only put ideas 
about that machine in other people's heads." 

Then as if to explain the difficulty of impress- 
ing incarnate brains with his ideas, he said : 

^^Subconscious effort depends either upon 
the entire withdrawal of the active conscious- 
ness, as in sleep or trance, or upon the rarest 
form of concentration found in geniuses or 
psychics. ' ' 

(The tests were all good, in the messages you 
sent to your wife and to Dr. Worcester.) 

Mrs. Vernon: *'He holds out his hand to you, 
and says, * Thank you for taking the message 
and also for understanding when Margery had 
to leave.' '' 

This polite little message recalled the fact 
that I had only been able to speak with Mrs. 
Friend for a moment in the corridor of Dr. 
Worcester's church. But the idea that Mr. 
Friend was also present had not occurred to 



^00 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

me. It accords with the evidence that we are 
indeed often accompanied by those who care 
for us. 

Pursuing my questions regarding the meth- 
ods of communication and anxious to hear 
about that celestial medium who must always 
have a hand in all communications, I asked 
Mr. Friend about the organization of the ethe- 
real psychic. 

*^It consists first in the wish to do, the desire 
to accomplish a certain thing. Thus will is sup- 
ported or propelled by a force which is exerted 
by the concentrated mental efforts of the group 
whose aim it is to establish communication. 
The psychic over here is chosen for his tenacity 
of purpose, his absolute veracity and his choice 
of this occupation. These attributes are all 
ingredients of the psychic's qualities, and we 
have to tell you of these. They are all in his 
mental development. The mental trend deter- 
mines the character of the psychic. The psy- 
chic composition over here consists more in 
mental trends and traits and inclinations.'^ 

(Are you communicating directly with Mrs. 
Vernon?) 

^*I am employing the usual means or route 
which consists of pathological explorations by 
means of telepathic currents conducted over 
here by a group who have vainly sought for 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 201 

years to find a brain without the usual inhibi- 
tions. In most human brains there are such 
inhibitions that it is impossible to deal with 
them. There are certain other physical inhibi- 
tions in the brain, such as an excess of the fleshly 
substance in the brain or an excess of the 
penumbra, but when the proportion is balanced, 
they can get through. They cannot get through 
this sort of sweet-bread substance, because the 
nerves are too thickly encased or protected." 

(Do you communicate directly with Mrs. Ver- 
non?) 

*^ Terribly hard to explain. Not exactly the 
same as when Mrs. de Koven and Mrs. Vernon 
speak together. When the messages come to 
Mrs. Vernon they have to use an intermediary. 
The intermediary speaks directly to Mrs. Ver- 
non. There is always some one who is consti- 
tuted to be a control. WTien the control is of 
high order then the results are good, and when 
the control is of a low order the results are not 
so good, even though the medium is of a high 
order." 

(Are you satisfied with my questions?) 

*'0h, very interesting, very interesting. 
They want Mrs. de Koven to begin her book 
while the interest is alive." 

(Does Mr. Friend know how many people I 
have seen in Boston?) 



202 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

**01i, yes. Yes. Thank Mrs. de Koven for 
seeing Margery. Mrs. Vernon should look over 
the records. Certain spots may not be exactly 
what she wants." 

(Mr. Friend hears Mrs. Vernon's daughter 
playing on the harp in the adjoining room.) 
*^ Pathological exploration consists in playing 
on chords as upon a harp, playing upon chords 
which vibrate in tune with our thoughts.'' 

(Does not my sister's language contain good 
metaphor?) 

*^The style is that of the controls. Make no 
mistake. Get this right, now, right now. You, 
Mrs. Vernon, know that is the language of your 
controls. Get the truth. By their words you 
shall know them. Your sister is a wonderful 
communicator and the deep affection between 
her and her sister makes the desire to com- 
municate. ' ' 

(Are they not her own words?) 

*^Yes, they are, but sometimes altered by the 
central control. A central telephone office, and 
in that sits a scholar, a most scholarly man, and 
he it is who directs. To him come others who 
wish to communicate. They impart to him their 
own metaphors, which when good he sends to 
the medium, and when inferior he transforms 
into the style she knows. This is very impor- 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 203 

tant. Mrs. Vernon knows them by their lan- 
guage, which is elegant and pedantic.*' 

Mrs. Vernon then explained to me by way of 
illustration of Mr. Friend's statement, that she 
knew her controls by their language, that when, 
for instance, she looked out of the window when 
it was raining, she would think, **It is a rainy 
day. ' ' If she hears in her mind, such words as 
*^ Atmospheric conditions produce a preponder- 
ance of moisture,'' she knows that she is get- 
ting a message, that her controls are speaking 
to her. 

My own statement, based on more than a 
year 's regular meetings with Mrs. Vernon, that 
her mind is singularly free from any tendency 
to elaboration in thought, may be taken on my 
own authority, and it will also be confirmed by 
those who know her. Her concepts are clear 
and simple, as is her language in speaking and 
in writing. Her crystal candor is one of the 
charms of her character and a most favorable 
condition for the transmission of the messages 
which she receives. No clearer or more sharply 
defined differentiation between dissimilar men- 
tal products could exist than that which char- 
acterizes Mrs. Vernon's individual thoughts 
from those she receives from her controls. By 
intention she refrains from reading the litera- 
ture of Psychic Phenomena, and in her daily 



204 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

life of constant occupation with her children, 
she strictly avoids any prolonged conversation 
on the subject. 

She has marked temperamental talent, ex- 
pressing itself in music and in her brilliant in- 
tuitions. This suggests the possession of that 
enlarged subconsciousness resident in the psy- 
chic brain ganglia whose corresponding enlarge- 
ment, according to Mr. Friend, represents the 
physical cause of such an extension. 

Taking up Mr. Friend's reference to my sis- 
ter in the foregoing messages, I asked if she 
would be permitted to continue her narrative. 

*^Yes, she has brought it up to date, but I 
wish to say one more thing about the central 
office. There sits the scholar in the central of- 
fice, always there at his desk. Once in a while 
he will accept the service of a substitute, but he 
always looks over what has been. done." 

(How can any records be kept of these com- 
munications?) 

*^Let us try once for all to explain that there 
are such things as thought formations and these 
persist and therefore we can look over the rec- 
ords. Into the central office come the communi- 
cators, those who understand the work and are 
interested in its growth. Acumen and effort 
and the result is assured.'' 

(Mrs. Vernon saw people coming and going, 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 205 

a head officer and an assistant.) '*Like a central 
office with different people coming in who have 
messages to send. Mrs. de Koven will say to 
herself, ^How beautiful my sister looked in that 
blue dress ! That is it. The mental image re- 
mains. Thoughts and aspirations which are 
laid bare.' '^ 

Nothing of all the astonishing information 
which I have received from these transcenden- 
tal communications was more impressive to me 
than Mr. Friend's reference to my thought of 
my sister in her blue dress. It was, in fact, her 
image in the dress she had worn just before she 
left me on her last visit, that I had constantly 
brought to my mind since her death. This 
image, then, Mr. Friend, whom I had not known 
in life, and who had been dead these five years, 
had seen and had recalled to me, as an example 
of an enduring thought form. The significance 
of the idea that we may and do put forth 
thoughts which have a visible form is illimit- 
able. In the interesting records of the auto- 
matic script, regarding the chapel at Glaston- 
bury, the monk Johannes says that he reani- 
mates the thought forms which he had left in 
the places he had inhabited. So, created char- 
acters in fiction may have a visible existence in 
the cosmos. Thought forms as seen by clair- 
voyants have color and their own special sig- 



206 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

nificance. An image when simultaneously 
thought of was actually photographed by the 
combined effort of two psychics (recorded by 
Dr. Funk). 

Evil and good thoughts are recorded on the 
circumambient ether for all the ethereal inhab- 
itants to read at their will. In a recent book, 
^^ Letters from the Other Side," a communica- 
tor calling himself Philemon thus explains the 
reanimation of his remaining thought forms: 
"Where I have lived in the body, spoken, 
thought and prayed, I have, in common with all 
living beings, left images, pictures, that may 
be galvanized into the semblance of life when 
I direct my thought or attention to the old per- 
sons and places. But much that is regarded as 
coming from me is merely the cast-off effete 
resultant of past activities, only slightly per- 
meated with my living, vital, ascended self. 
Some of the communications received are 
largely due to past associations much clogged 
and hampered by self -directed thought. When 
writing here (that is with this particular me- 
dium) this objection does not hold good, to any- 
thing like the same extent; the quality is purer." 

In the light of this enormous extension of the 
agency of thought forms in communications, the 
importance of information strictly new, or re- 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 207 

lating to conditions in the other world, cannot 
be over-estimated. 

At the sitting of March the 6th, following the 
one whose messages I have above recorded, Mr. 
Friend announced his presence immediately by 
addressing me directly: 

''Good morning, Mrs. de Koven! In the im- 
passe in which I found myself after death, one 
gleam of light shed its radiance and that was 
caused by the electric rays emanating from the 
psychic organism of so-called living mediums. 
This emanation vibrates in harmony with 
rhythmical currents which bear it through the 
ether. My wife's 'light' differs from Mrs. 
Vernon's only in degree, as their planes or de- 
velopment correspond somewhat. She is less 
psychically developed." 

(Have you communicated with her directly?) 

"Yes, but she has not worked over it, com- 
munications not finished. This is important 
for Mrs. de Koven to know. Science should 
attack the problem from the pathological stand- 
point, but eliminating the popular idea of per- 
version. The sensitiveness may be induced by 
any excess of emotion such as grief, joy, love, 
all of these. But the sensitiveness developed by 
these emotions should be under good control. 
After great sorrow, one may emerge in a psy- 
chic condition, but this is useful only when the 



208 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ego is discarded and the emotion held well in 
hand. Any such emotion creates vibrations in 
the ganglia. The force so created may be di- 
rected in another channel. This condition may 
be passed down and children of psychics may be 
psychic. ' ' 

Mrs. Vernon here referred to the prenatal 
history which induced this quality in herself 
and in others of her family. 

* ^ Yes, they have got it. Back somewhere, you 
will always find that there has been an excess 
of some kind of emotion. With reference to 
static currents^ — ^they are like subdivisions of a 
main current and we suffer from them too. 
They disperse or deflect our cablegrams and 
are almost entirely atmospheric, not depending 
upon the condition of the medium." 

Mrs. Vernon here remarked that on Fridays, 
which have this winter often been rainy, she 
has not been able to get good currents, which 
her Friday sitter has observed. 

**When there is almost complete possession, 
as in the case of Mr. Ticknor, the effect of mois- 
ture is less, the difficulty is less apparent. But 
Mrs. Vernon is like a tightly strung violin. We 
pick on these strings. Mr. Ticknor and Mrs. 
Vernon are as unlike as the poles. He does not 
have these difficulties.'' 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 809 

(Was Mr. Friend there last Saturday night 
at the meeting of the *' Investigators ''?) 

*^Yes. I am apt to accompany this medium." 

(Who was Col. Lee?) 

* ^ Col. Lee depends for his mental sustenance 
upon his reading the lives of various statesmen 
such as Lincoln, and also some personal con- 
tact with Rappallier (?).'' 

(What did he do in his life?) 

*^He had no earthly fame, no military fame, 
although he aspired thereto, but won some lau- 
rels as a speaker." 

Mrs. Vernon announced at this point that she 
saw Col. Lee and, having remarked upon his 
very distinctly northern accent in his delivery 
of his discourse at the meeting of March the 
1st, asked him how he lost his Southern accent. 

Col. Lee : ^'That accent doesn't come through 
very well, but near Mason and Dixon's line it 
is not so pronounced." 

Mr. Friend : ^ ' He is an adept at trance, has 
much power." 

An illustration of Col. Lee's power to en- 
trance the medium was then and there provided, 
for Mrs. Vernon nearly went under his control. 
She said that she felt exceedingly sleepy and 
that her hands and feet felt ^4nert"; she re- 
sisted the influence, however, very strongly and 
the sensation passed. 



210 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Col. Lee : **I got a furlough and on that fur- 
lough I proceeded to die.'' 

Mr. Friend : ^ ' Col. Lee is a kind and simple- 
hearted southern gentleman, has tremendous 
power, which he uses for good. Lost his accent, 
as he did not come from very far South, away 
from home a good deal." 

Mrs. Vernon said that she was at this point 
conscious of a stop in the proceedings, the 
group of her controls apparently taking charge, 
and preventing Col. Lee from going on with his 
messages, and at the same time she heard the 
name of my sister, as if she had been waiting 
for her turn to communicate. 

Mr. Friend: ''Col. Lee is a delightful old 
soul, but does not figure on our program." 
(Laughing good-naturedly.) 

Then my sister appeared and sent messages 
which have been already recorded. 

At the next sitting, I asked Mr. Friend if Mr. 
Ticknor was communicated with directly, with- 
out the aid of controls. 

*'Mr. Ticknor 's condition corresponds to that 
of the wireless instrument which is operated by 
experienced and trained experts in the subject. 
Therefore he can be said to come in direct con- 
tact without the aid of controls. But all who 
communicate with Mr. Ticknor must have a cer- 
tain knowledge of the methods else they would 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 211 

be obliged to use a control. These experienced 
spirits control conditions, the wires and so 
forth, as much as the regularly attending con- 
trols, but these others, through their knowledge 
of the vibrations and methods, can communi- 
cate with Mr. Ticknor." 

(Is Mr. Friend interested in our present 
plans for the pursuit of Psychic Research?) 

** Franklin's ^Almanac' would be a good 
sample to go by.*' 

This refers to a proposed pamphlet to record 
**The Ticknor Seances," which had been under 
discussion. 

**Be terse and brief, no long-involved sen- 
tences. Very anxious about this, not verbose 
sentences, clear free style, short sentences." 

(Are fabrics such as tapestries and laces pro- 
cured by the inexpert from those who know 
how to make them? Do they purchase them 
from shops, for instance, to furnish their 
abodes?) 

*^The only currency is an interchange of fa- 
vors, brought about by a desire to be courteous 
to each other." 

(If I, for instance, should wish to surround 
myself with lovely things, would any spirit 
friends supply me with them?) 

**If a genuine desire to please you exists on 
the part of those who have the power to make 



212 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

these things. Hence the Bible expression. 
*Lay up for yourselves treasure in Heaven.' 
If you want to do for people, they will want to 
do for you.'' 

(Does the ethereal body possess organs?) 
*'Not in the last analysis. A quoi honf as 
the French say. There is no physical function- 
ing." 

(How are you known to each other? What 
appearance do you assume to each other?) 

*^ Women adopt the outline of the female 
form, minus the furbelows of fashion. Men re- 
tain the masculine representation, but envelop 
themselves ad libitum. (Shows a collection of 
beautiful stuffs of many colors.) They can 
wear anything they prefer, can use beautiful 
colors and flowing vestments; can have their 
choice — no restriction as to price. Greece, with 
her classic garments, more clearly interpreted 
our costumes than any other nation." 

(Is there animal life in the ethereal world?) 
*^ Anything evolved enough to possess the 
semblance of a soul has its counterpart here. 
The differentiation is comparatively subtle be- 
tween animation, automatic animation, and en- 
teric vitality. Anything which has enteric vital- 
ity is represented in the ethereal world. The 
soul of a jellyfish is not evolved enough. When 
evolved enough it gets its enteric vitality." 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 213 

(What is the difference between objects made 
by the action of mind alone and those made of 
ether f) 

^^Preconceived ideas create images, images 
create objects, objects are matter. Now reverse 
it. Matter was embryo, embryo was thought, 
thought was a mental projection, therefore the 
core of all things lies in the mind.'' 

(When my sister said that Mahomet makes 
the mountain come to him, what did she mean? 
Are the mountains merely mental images ? Are 
all landscapes merely mental? A. de K.) 

Mrs. Vernon heard, '^Let us proceed to the 
mountains. We have arrived. Wliat brought 
us? Not alone the vehicle of transportation. 
What propelled the vehicle of transportation? 
The will or desire to go, formulated in our 
brains. Everything is the product of our men- 
tal machinery. Where there is no difficulty in 
transportation, one is where one wants to be. 
Terrestrial conditions necessitate manipulation 
of matter, whereas so-called celestial ones re- 
quire only mental operation such as your ret- 
inal hallucinations. When Mahomet came to 
the mountain, it originates right here." (Some 
one pointing to his forehead.) 

(What objects are made of ether and what 
are purely mental?) 

* * You make a chair of ether by mental force. ' ' 



214 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

(But there must be some difference between 
the purely mental projections and objects such 
as chairs? A. de K.) 

V'The process is the same." 

(But you have told us that there was a ma- 
chine by which constructional vibrations were 
used to form a sort of collection of ether, which 
was used to make houses and objects such as 
tables, chairs, flowers and so forth. "We are 
told also of purely mental vibrations such as 
take place in thought transference.) 

*^Mrs. de Koven is right. There is a differ- 
ence. The differentiation lies in the adaptabil- 
ity of the thing desired, or the use to which it is 
put. One sojourns in the mountains, but one 
sits on a chair. Therefore the method of pro- 
duction varies somewhat as with you. It is all 
manipulation of the ether in a way, but objects 
of virtu require what you would call a different 
kind of conjuring from that of transportation. 
There is a classification, headings under which 
these different methods of projection are com- 
prised. When you want to travel there is a 
method of projecting yourself through space. 
When you desire to create, you concentrate, as 
you do on your hands when you fabricate on 
earth. Transposition of phrase, the same 
whether Mahomet came to the mountain or the 
mountain came to him. Not so difficult to un- 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 215 

derstand if you eliminate matter as you know 
it on earth/' 

In this connection Col. Lee's statements re- 
garding the same subject are interesting. I 
had asked him whether the ethereal world was 
entirely one of ideals or ether manipulated by 
mind. 

*^The latter, Madame," he replied, ** obvious- 
ly so." 

Pursuing my questions, I asked if there were 
houses made by the spirits in which the lesser 
spirits dwelt. To this he answered: 

**Yes, we care for our own. We have cities 
in our realm of life, infinitely fairer than yours 
and of necessity." 

*^Who makes the landscapes," I asked him. 

* ^ The Divine Father makes them ; that Spirit 
real, yet intangible, a part of all that is and 
running through all that doth exist. As far 
as perfecting his handiwork, we in our world 
are able in some particulars so to do, as indeed 
in your world the natural resources are beauti- 
fied and perfected under a professional manipu- 
lation. ' ' 

To my question if individual spirits were 
able to project landscapes, he replied: 

**Yes, for we live in a world of projection, as 
I told you a few moments ago ; your life in this 
old world of labor, tears and trade is merely a 



ai6 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

projection of another life, wMeh you really en- 
joy in another and fairer realm." 

In the discourse of March the 1st, from 
which these quotations are made, Col. Lee 
stated that the ^'subliminal ego which has for 
centuries been passing through a state or states 
of evolution becomes 'centered' until it is able 
to become a part of human life. And so I say 
that you do not actually live in this world, for 
your spirit certainly cannot live in a material 
world, but must exist in another dimension of 
life at all times. The projection of life which 
you consider your real being is not really that, 
remember, but merely a waking dream, given 
to you to perfect those senses most necessary 
to your development." 

Here then is an amplification of my sister's 
statement that the subconscious or subliminal 
self is the real and enduring part of us, and an 
illuminating extension of our comprehension of 
the character of that self and of its continuous 
connection with the life eternal. 

In the discourse delivered on the 5th of April 
a question was answered by Col. Lee as to the 
proximity of our world to theirs. 

''This question has been asked before and 
as near as I am able to determine may well be 
answered by saying that our world exists within 
yours. Eemember we live in the fourth dimen- 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 217 

sion of existence, you in the third. You can 
pass through our buildings, they are nothing to 
you. They mean nothing in so far as physical 
touch or feeling is concerned. In this way your 
buildings appear as naught to us. Our build- 
ings on the other hand are real and tangible to 
us, as yours are to you.'' 

At the sitting of the 15th of April I asked Mr. 
Friend if there were ethereal houses near us 
and if we could walk through them. 

^ ' There are realms within realms like the en- 
folding shell of a snail and as apparently unre- 
lated as the quality of the meat is to the shell. 
The meat of the snail represents the terrestrial 
existence, which is perishable and subject to de- 
cay. The shell possesses the enduring qualities 
of the ethereal existence, of course minus the 
qualitiespertainingtothe ether or air. For those 
who desire them, houses are provided, but have 
no permanency as with you, unless the demand 
or desire persists. The locality of their world 
envelops yours, as the shell envelops the meat, 
and they could without any confusion or ap- 
parent incongruity transform your dwellings 
according to their needs, without the formality 
of asking permission. No conflict between our 
houses and yours. We can erect a house right 
here if we want to. We do not see this house. 



218 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

if we do not wish to. As the soul pervades the 
body so does our ethereal existence envelop and 
pervade yours. The workings of nature you 
can follow to their source by means of com- 
parisons. Take body and soul, take ethereal 
house, take material house. If we choose to 
erect a house on your sidewalk you do walk 
through this house without seeing it.'' 

(Do these houses belong to the first stage of 
development?) 

^^They belong to all stages of development, 
since what is the prerogative of the lower order 
of spirits is also the prerogative of the highly 
developed ones if they wish to use it. The 
higher privileges belong to the higher order, 
but there are no privileges which the higher 
order cannot have." 

At the next sitting I continued my questions 
regarding the interpenetration of our world 
with the ethereal world. 

Mr. Friend (showing a vision of a beautiful 
scene of mountains and a lake at sunset) : *^The 
inhabitants are near this beautiful scene. We 
can come down if we like and communicate with 
the inhabitants, or enjoy the landscape at close 
range if we desire. We are a good deal like 
aerial observers who soar about enjoying the 
panorama either from a height or from a land- 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 219 

ing place. But like the aerial observers being 
unlike the inhabitants until they discard their 
paraphernalia/' 

(Where does your ethereal world begin?) 
*^ According to development or desire. Either 
close to the earth or myriads of miles away. 
Earthbound spirits reside in a cloudy ethereal 
substance resembling the exudations from a 
sweating horse, unable on account of its pol- 
luted condition to rise very high. Other souls 
more developed inhabit a pure grade of ether 
qualified by its buoyancy to develop into greater 
heights of eternity. ' ' 

• •••••• 

At the sitting of May the 1st, I asked about 
the exact nature of telepathic messages, for the 
reason that I had seen a long communication 
from Mr. Myers in the Journal of the American 
Society for Psychical Research, in which he had 
stated that long-distance messages were carried 
to psychics by spirit messengers. 

Mr. Friend : ^ ' Two people tossing a ball, ball 
goes through the air ; that is what thought does. 
The passage of the ball or thought through the 
air is called telepathy ! ' ' 

(Does thought proceed through waves?) 
*' Thought is borne on waves. The dynamos 
are in the brains of the senders. Telepathy 
varies, voluntary and involuntary, directed or 



220 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

aimless. Projected towards an object or 
ejected into space, according to the desire of the 
individual. In other words, you may fasten 
your thoughts with a purpose or eject them into 
space without any particular concentration.'' 

(Are these waves of ether?) 

^'They agitate the ether. These waves par- 
take of the nature of electricity, coming from 
these mental dynamos. They agitate the ether. " 

(Are distant messages brought by spirits'?) 

*^ Those which psychics receive usually are 
brought by spirits. Those which others receive 
may be tinged with transcendental nuances. '^ 

(How are very distant messages from one 
continent to another carried?) 

** Superimposed electrical currents upon ethe- 
real substance. An electrical current blended 
with matter. A live wire insulated by ethereal 
matter. Otherwise the wire would burn out. 
Brains, which are the dynamos, send out the 
messages. '^ 

I then related that on one occasion in London 
I was suddenly made aware that I should that 
evening see a friend with whom I had had no 
communication for four years. I did see 
the friend, and have always been curious to 
understand the possibility of prophecy as illus- 
trated by the incident. 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 221 

(How was this message given, was it by a 
spirit!) 

' * Not necessarily. ' ' 

(Who gave me the message?) 

' ' There is a differentiation between telepathy 
and transcendental communication. Telepathic 
explosions of the description to which Mrs. de 
Koven has just referred, need not savor of the 
mesmerical variety. ' ^ 

Mrs. Vernon remarked at this point that Mr. 
Friend probably meant by his use of the word 
^^ mesmerical,'' that the controls of a medium 
use a certain sort of ^ ^mesmerical" or ^ ^mag- 
netic'' power, when in the act of communicating. 

*'We do mesmerize the medium to a certain 
extent. The friend caught the magnetic ema- 
nation from Mrs. de Koven 's personality. This 
form of communication does not savor of the 
messages borne by spirits. With Mrs. de 
Koven these emanations had blended before. 
When Mrs. de Koven was in London the impact 
of those emanations took place — renewed." 

(Why did that impact announce that I should 
see this friend?) 

'*To that extent coming events cast their 
shadows before. She caught the embryo." 

Here, then, is an explanation, bearing upon 
the already stated presence of electrical cur- 
rents surrounding the earth, of the numberless 



«22 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

announcements of letters or of meetings with 
friends, which are of ahnost universal experi- 
ence. 

Our own electrical or magnetic emanations 
are sent out apparently into the ether, coming 
in contact with those of the friends who are re- 
lated closely to us, and registering prophetic 
messages upon our nerve wires. 

The next question which I asked Mr. Friend 
was as to how spirits were able to rap. 

*' Physical phenomena are the combination of 
the electrical emanations from certain human 
or animal organisms, acting upon some resonant 
substance such as wood. It has to be wood or 
glass, some resonant substance. '^ 

(When I heard the raps two weeks ago, 
while Mrs. Horton was with me, was she the 
medium?) 

^^Mrs. de Koven can get them equally well.'' 

(Does the magnetism combine with the ether 
in the room to make the rod which the spirits 
use?) 

^'Yes. An implement, not necessarily in the 
form of a rod. Eod is a good term, a psychic 
rod. It is important to recognize two forms 
of telepathy. All telepathy is not borne by 
spirits. Combination of magnetic emanations, 
which result in communication. ' ' 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 223 

(Why do not Mr. Myers and Dr. Hodgson 
communicate with ns?) 

**We are all here but because Mr. Friend 
knew Mrs. Vernon, we allow him to speak for 
us." 

Then taking up the subject of materializa- 
tion, lately discussed in the Hibhert Journal, 
following Dr. Geley^s experiments I asked if 
materializations were exudations from the body 
of a medium. 

* ^ Not alone. Materialization is a process in- 
volving the combination of unseen magnetic 
forces, visualizing the exudation of the me- 
dium." 

(Are there materialized spirits?) 

* ^ They are like the shell of a locust, manipu- 
lated temporarily and enabled to perform cer- 
tain actions resembling the activities of the de- 
parted one. Shell automatically moved." 

(Does the spirit of the departed one inhabit 
this shell?) 

** Sometimes it does, and makes use of the 
shell, as you would of an automaton, but it 
lacks the physical sensations which you have." 

Between the date of this message (April the 
15th) and June the 28th, when I saw Mrs. Ver- 
non at Manchester, I had given some considera- 
tion to the subject of materialization, in con- 



224. A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

nection with its bearing upon the construction 
of the ethereal world. My conjectures were 
not based upon any opinions other than my own. 
The answers to my questions at this last sit- 
ting furnished information exterior to my own 
thoughts, but in general they confirm my de- 
ductions. 

(Is the exuded substance from the medium a 
form of ether? — A. de K.) 

*' Ethereal promulgations and exudations de- 
pend upon the dispensation or diffusion of mag- 
netic force in connection with elemental fluidic 
matter. ' ' 

(Is the fluidic matter the same as the ether 
of the universe?) 

**Only to the extent that they commingle. 
The exudations and the ethereal matter do 
mingle, but they are not the same.'' 

(Is there a single material substance in the 
universe?) 

*^ Human beings are all flesh and blood but 
they are not the same. ' ' 

(The conclusion of Dr. Geley is that there is 
a single primordial substance in normal and 
supernormal physiology.) 

^^We would rather say there are two, like 
body and soul. Like substance and vitaHzer. 
When the vitalizer leaves it the substance dis- 
integrates, like a decaying body." 



MR. EDWIN FRIEND 225 

(Is there one substance in the last analysis?) 

Edwin Friend: **A factory, rags that come 
out paper, fat that comes out soap. Very differ- 
ent, altered, but really the same substance.'* 

(Is the formula of the creative process in the 
ethereal world like that of the materialization 
experiments?) 

** Yes, that is the formula for physical demon- 
stration. ' ' 

(Is this the formula for the creation of ob- 
jects in the ethereal world?) 

**Yes, that is the formula plus the individ- 
ual." 

(I am trying to think that the threads and 
other forms, although varying in their mani- 
festation, are all modifications or condensations 
of one primordial substance.) 

*^Yes, over here we manipulate first hand. 
There it is second hand, or through the body 
of the medium. ' ' 

(Are electrons modified ether?) 

**Not modified; vitalized or electrified ether, 
reenforced by electricity. ' ' 

(Ether then is a form of matter extending 
through the universe?) 

^'Pervading, penetrating, enveloping and fi- 
nally taking form. Thin air, small particles 
forming, whirling about, finally taking form. I 
want to support the theory of molecular attrac- 



226 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

tion, up to a certain point. An old-fashioned 
theory. Momentum does not do it alone. Laws 
of gravitation and momentum provide the im- 
pact but not the animation. Molecules could 
remain passive, after the impact, without the 
electrical sparks. ' ' 



CHAPTER VIII 
Old Acquaintances 

THE several members of my husband's fam- 
ily who have communicated with me 
through Mrs. Vernon have sent extremely char- 
acteristic messages. On October the 1st, 1918, 
his father, the Rev. Henry de Koven, announced 
his presence by a gesture of blessing, the same 
gesture with which he had bade me ^^FarewelP' 
when I saw him for the last time in the villa 
in Florence where my husband and I had spent 
the first month of our marriage. 

Mrs. Vernon heard: ^* Reggie and Anna'' and 
said, ^'This is not your sister; it is an older 
communicator. ' ' 

(Is it my father?) 

Mrs. Vernon said, * ^ No, but I hear the word 
* Father.'" 

Recalling then this gesture of blessing, I 
asked if it could be my father-in-law. 

*^ Outskirts of a small town, practically un- 
known. Fastened in that town therefore un- 
known. 

227 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

'^Proofs : (Shows a hand clasping the throat.) 
E — d revitalized.*' 

I was convinced after this communication 
that it was my father-in-law, for the descrip- 
tion of the small town and the statement that 
some one living there had been '^practically 
unknown'' could in my opinion concern only 
my brother-in-law, Capt. de Koven, who had for 
many years lived in Hove near Brighton, in 
declining health and seeing very few people ex- 
cept the members of his family. 

(Have you seen my father?) 

"Hunted me up. He is more forcible than 
I am ; more likely to hunt me up than I to hunt 
him up. I was inclined to have things done 
for me. He was more executive." 

(What have you and Uncle James done in the 
other world?) 

"James has the fulfillment of his heart's de- 
sire. He has cut the bonds which held him to 
the earth. James evolves, supplants inferior 
ideas by suggestions. James from his superior 
sphere can look down and can see spirits strug- 
gling with sordid ideas and dispels them or 
supplants them with higher thoughts by the 
magnetism of his spirituality. James is like a 
dynamo. Myriads of undeveloped souls have 
responded to James' vibrations." 

(What is it like over there?) 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES 229 

**Tlie best description you can give is that 
they try to raise undeveloped souls most of the 
time. Musicians have their music, painters 
have their colors, athletes have their games, 
but the better part of the time is used in this 
uplift work. ' ' 

(Is that world clear to you as this is to us?) 

^^As a superfluity of resonance reveals the 
limitations of your aural powers, so the com- 
plexities presented to the vision would over- 
tax the perceptivity were it not for the elasti- 
city of the soul.'' 

To those who can remember the gentle and 
extremely distinguished Dr. Henry de Koven 
and his more famous brother, Dr. James, or 
have heard of the latter 's eloquence, of his 
compelling magnetism, of his unrivaled power 
of influencing the pupils in Eacine College, of 
which he was the founder, these communica- 
tions will furnish convincing examples of that 
dramatic verity which is so large a part of the 
proof of survival. The gesture of a hand clasp- 
ing the throat, communicated at the same time 
as the word ^'Proofs,'' indicates that Dr. de 
Koven 's knowledge of my brother-in-law's fatal 
malady of the throat was given as a ^^ proof." 
The remark about the ^ ^ revitalization " of his 
other son, after a long illness, is in natural 
proximity to his reference to the approaching 



230 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

death of tlie younger. A characteristic exam- 
ple of his distinguished vocabulary is found in 
his statement about the complexities presented 
to the vision of discarnate souls. This is the 
only communication received by me which re- 
fers to the elasticity of the soul and its resulting 
ability to perceive the multiplicity of projected 
images in the ethereal world. 

On December the 3rd, after the death of my 
brother-in-law, Captain de Koven, an elder 
brother, LeEoy, who died over twenty-five years 
ago, appeared. Kindly, a little curt in his 
humor, and very popular in the world of Flor- 
ence where he lived for many years, he reap- 
pears in this communication precisely as I re- 
member him in life. 

He was interested in the establishment of a 
model dairy farm for supplying pure milk to 
the Florentines at the time of his death. His 
occupation of supplying food to those lately 
dead seems to conform to his earthly trends, 
as my sister has so often said is the rule in 
our continuing lives in the other world. 

Mrs. Vernon heard: **Franzipanni, Italy — 
some one in the entourage of diplomatic cir- 
cles." 

(Is this LeEoy, for if so I am glad to hear 
from him. A. de K.) 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES 231 

*^ Placed by the sea, he was anchored there 
like a ship — with this result.'' 

(Kecognizing the reference to Captain de 
Koven's residence in Hove near the sea, I 
asked again if this was not LeRoy.) 

^'Anna has guessed it.*' 

(Are you busy over there?) 

^*Busy? Yes. Lots of fun after one gets 
acclimated. ' ' 

(Have you met Bertie! Is he awake yet?) 

* ' Bertie is exhaling his superfluous fiber, and 
retaining in his system the effusion I offered 
him. A transformation accompanying disso- 
lution. (Laughs.) The Eed Cross isn't in it 
with us. (Vision of people standing around 
ready to administer the necessary nutriment.) 
Earthly trends are indicative of celestial pur- 
suits. (Shows a vision of Eeggie and himself 
together. Pats Reggie's shoulder.) Fulfill- 
ment came with opportunity. Reggie had the 
opportunity, then the fulfillment came." 

Mrs. Vernon heard Alice, LeRoy's wife: 
^^Tell Anna that we rest in peace amiably to- 
gether, the family, and I really enjoy myself." 

(Hasn't Reggie's mother been proud of what 
he has done in music?) 

LeRoy: ''We consider Reggie's accomplish- 
ments stupendous ( !) and rejoice at the im- 
provement in his health. Mother relates how 



232 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Eeggie vanquished objections and sowed the 
seeds of his original musical accomplishments." 

The preference of the members of the de 
Koven family for each other's society, to the 
exclusion of outside friends or acquaintances, 
seem to continue in the other world, to their 
mutual satisfaction. 

Mrs. de Koven 's reference to my husband's 
*^ vanquishing of objections" concerns his per- 
sistence in pursuing his musical studies in spite 
of his father's opposition to the adoption of a 
musical career. 

The loyalty of this family to each other was 
curiously shown by the appearance of LeEoy, 
on the occasion of my last meeting with Mrs. 
Vernon at Manchester. Shortly before this 
meeting I had received, through the ouija 
board, very disquieting messages from very 
powerful mischievous spirits, who moved the 
board with such unexampled force that I could 
with difficulty control it. The messages con- 
cerned my husband's health and purported to 
come from his mother. 

Mrs. Vernon heard : * ' Florence — a sudden de- 
parture." 

I remarked that this must be LeEoy who had 
died very suddenly in Florence. I also ob- 
served that I thought that he had probably 
come to reassure me about my husband. 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES 233 

^'You have hit it. That is why I came, one 
good turn deserves another.'' 

(I don't think that I ever did much for you, 
dear LeEoy.) 

^^You have helped us all, all the de Koven 
family, and one good turn deserves another. 
I thought it was better form to come than 
Bertie. So I came." 

(Was it your mother who warned me?) 

^^We saw your alarm. It was mischief- 
makers who got in." 

(Who were they?) 

'*I do not know. I will explain about the 
ouija board. When Anna looks at Mrs. Yernon 
through her reading glasses she does not see 
her face plainly, does she ? It is like that, con- 
fused, inaccurate. It is as if you were trying 
to look at something far away, as one of these 
mountains. We are distant, and in between 
these others come in and make believe. We 
cannot help it. There is no immediate danger, 
Anna can be reassured." 

Mrs. Yernon heard my sister: ^'I was there, 
but I could do nothing. They had great control 
of the conditions; only the masters could con- 
trol them." 

At this meeting I was sitting, facing Mrs. 
Yernon, while I made notes of the messages and 
wore my reading glasses. Around us plainly. 



234 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

seen through the windows, were the Vermont 
mountains. Was my brother-in-law in the 
room? Did he see me with my glasses? Did 
he see the mountains? I leave it to my readers 
to reply. 

One more visitor came to speak with Mrs. 
Vernon, announcing herself by the appearance 
of a star. Mrs. Vernon was suddenly deeply 
moved and tears filled her eyes. It was thus 
that a dear friend lately torn from her adoring 
family announced her presence. Star was her 
middle name, and only by this signal was she 
able to speak to her friend. Then came Mr. 
Friend again, accompanying her and saying: 
*^ We are a strange band, we who have been torn 
away from those we love. There is a strong 
bond. We call ourselves by our Christian 

names. Violet, Anne, Edwin There is 

plenty of work for the charitably inclined. ' ' 

That Paradise is no state of immediate bliss, 
we have been told again and again. Separation 
is agony there as here. But companionship, 
that chief est joy of humanity, is an inalienable 
privilege, and a deep consolation, together with 
charity, which suifereth all things, even in the 
midst of the labyrinthine mysteries of the here- 
after. Unconsciousness, Mr. Friend has else- 
where said, may endure for a long period, not 
unconsciousness of self, but a lack of compre- 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES 235 

hension of the meaning of the universe and the 
necessity of spiritual development. In that 
dim Purgatorial state souls may linger long, 
if on earth they have refused to recognize that 
inevitable destiny. Here is an example of the 
loneliness which awaited a soul to whom life 
was an almost unmitigated pleasure. 

'^Have you seen Mr. f I asked my sister 

one day, mentioning the name of a brilliantly 
handsome and witty friend who had died some 
twelve years ago. 

Mrs. Vernon saw my sister laughing, and saw 
the evocation of a dancing scene. Mrs. Vernon 
saw also a vision of beautifully dressed women 
as at a garden party, with parasols and fans — - 
and talking together with gayety and laughter. 
She said that she felt an emanation from an 
individual of social tastes, and saw a man of 
^^ polish, breeding and birth, with a marked 
courtesy and distinction of manner. '^ 

Then Mrs. Vernon heard: ^^ Louise has lent a 
hand. Tell my wife that Louise has lent a 
hand. Louise followed me up. I wanted to 
come back, but Louise pushed me forward. I 
was homesick, oh, so homesick. I missed my 
wife ^s devotion. ' ' 

(Are you busy?) 

^* Getting myself tidied up,'' he replied, and 



236 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

showed a vision of a valet taking off his coat 
and putting on another garb. 

'^I am divested of my earthly habiliments 
and trying to take on a semblance as well as the 
fabric of spirituality.'' 

That he would try, in his manly way, to adapt 
himself to the new and strange conditions, I 
could not doubt, but that he was not wholly 
successful in this effort, he plainly admitted, 
when I asked him if he was happy. 

*^Not particularly," he answered. *'I liked 
my other clothes better, but as they are appar- 
ently permanently discarded, I have gone to it, 
with Louise's help." 

The name of his gentle sister-in-law was in- 
correctly transmitted, but in a later sitting he 
returned to give it again and then with better 
success. Still later he has informed his wife 
that he is a * ^ citizen of heaven, ' ' in which loyal 
attitude we may leave him with hopes of ulti- 
mate and increasing contentment. 

An instance of the constant watchfulness of 
our so-called departed loved ones occurred 
when in December of 1918 I had an attack of 
pain from what appeared to be gallstones. 

On the morning following a night of very 
severe pain, Mrs. Vernon visited me and heard 
my sister say that she had been with me during 
the night but had been ^ ^ so helpless. ' ' She also 



OLD ACQUAINTANCES 237 

said that there was *^now a void where there 
had been occupation.'^ 

On the Monday following December the 9th, 
an X-ray examination was made to discover 
the presence of gallstones. 

On the morning of December 10th I saw Mrs. 
Vernon, who heard the following message : 

'^Punctilious but estimable (character of my 
physician), refutation of dogmas. Portentous 
enquiry (the X-ray) discloses null and void 
protuberances." 

On the afternoon of the 10th of December my 
physician announced to me that *Hhe X-ray 
showed no gallstones. ' ' 

I am informed that gallstones are not always 
perceptible by the X-ray, but the information 
as to the fact that none were disclosed ante- 
dated the announcement of the physician. 
There have not been since that time any fur- 
ther evidence of their presence, altho without 
question they were the cause of the attack. 

The hint of irony at the *' portentous en- 
quiry '^ shows that our friends have by no means 
lost their humor in their new phase of existence. 

Assuming that it is true that our friends are 
often with us, it is not surprising that their 
chief suffering arises from their helplessness 
to manifest their presence to those not psychi- 
cally endowed, particularly when, as Eaymond 



238 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

relates, they see their dear one plunged in 
hopeless sorrow. 

A striking incident suggesting strongly my 
sister's presence in my house during a conver- 
sation between my husband and myself was 
indicated by herself during the private seance 
with Mr. Ticknor. 

*^What about the Excelsior f asked my sis- 
ter. '*E. was very angry. Did he say the in- 
strument gave pain?'* 

On my explanation of the trouble with the 
management of the * ^ Excelsior ' ' company and 
my assertion that my husband's published 
criticism of one of their instruments was justi- 
fied, although it elicited a protest from the ad- 
vertising department of the journal in which 
he published it, she replied : 

* *I did not say he was wrong. I knew he was 
right but I wanted to understand it. Who is 

The reason why my sister failed to under- 
stand the cause of my husband 's annoyance was 
that she did not read the letter handed to me by 
my husband, which was the cause of this annoy- 
ance. Hence she was unable to understand the 
meaning of our conversation. I was ignorant 
of the name of the President of the Company, 
which she gave correctly, as I was afterwards 
informed. 



CHAPTER IX 
A Recokd of Materialization 

TOWAEDS the end of the year 1919, I re- 
ceived through Mrs. Vernon certain re- 
plies to questions regarding the ether, which 
I append as adding further testimony to that 
already recorded in communications from be- 
yond regarding the existence of some form of 
matter which is manipulated by the discarnate 
and forms the essence of their ethereal encase- 
ments. 

Mr. Friend : '^ Ether is a term for this matter 
or substance. This surrounding ethereal sub- 
stance is acted upon by electrical radiations.'' 

(Is the ether itself originated by force or 
mind?) 

^'Mind must have something to act upon to 
manipulate with. How can a carpenter work 
without wood and nails? How can a musician 
play without a piano? Thought force must 
have material to play upon. Call it smoke. It 
resembles smoke. Look at that cigarette smoke 
between you and the light. The air is filled 

239 



240 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

with a substance like that — smoke only more 
refined. Einstein has formulated only one step 
of the way. He has not gone the whole way. 
You can call this substance smoke, or ether, or 
fog, or simply atmosphere. The starry theory 
is right inasmuch as meteoric bodies contain 
their modicum of magnetism. Currents of me- 
teoric magnetism attract the output from the 
earth and other stellar bodies and the revo- 
lution of these bodies in their orbits molds and 
forms this substance, without any particular 
direction unless a brain should be back of it. 
In other words, emanations go round and round 
aimlessly but when the brain says, *I will make 
a table,' or any other object that is when the 
substance takes form.'' 

On December 9th my sister, communicating, 
said that she had been ^'tremendously inter- 
ested in her development, learning the A, B, C 
of self-control and what it is to be serious in- 
stead of frivolous and what it is to be a con- 
tainer of spiritual essences, permeated with 
spiritual essences. The organisms we possess 
must be thus permeated or it means disintegra- 
tion." 

(What is that organism?) 

*'Why does Anna worry so much about 
whether you call it ether or not? That organ- 



MATERIALIZATION 241 

ism is what you call a composite formation con- 
taining virtually all of the molecules compris- 
ing a magnetic emanation. ' ' 

(Is there any material or matter combined 
with this magnetism?) 

' * Call it ether or atmosphere. This magnetic 
or meteoric magnetism works or molds a certain 
kind of matter. Creatures of flesh and blood 
inhabit the earth. Creatures of magnetism and 
matter inhabit the ethereal realms. '^ 

(Are there ethereal realms around the stellar 
bodies?) 

^^Yes, there are. Like an aeroplane which 
swoops down and swoops up again we can enter 
where we choose. As the penumbra of the 
brain enfolds, surrounds, encloses, — each plane 
has its penumbra — emanations peculiar to each 
planet. You can call that penumbra ether, air, 
atmosphere. 

** Meteoric substances which are thrown off 
are simply matter acted upon by magnetism — 
acted upon by the gradations of the air, by heat 
or cold, it becomes hard or soft. Get your de- 
ductions from Nature. Get an example and 
follow it straight through.'' 

Here then in these messages from my sister 
and Mr. Friend we have at least three state- 
ments of an illuminating character. First, 



242 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

there is a substance indeterminate in its name 
but a substance wMch has an existence. Sec- 
ondly, we have the statement that it is acted 
upon by magnetic forces and also by thought. 
Third, we have a statement that the substance 
exists in the penumbra or spheres of the stellar 
bodies. 

Is the ethereal realm around the earth the 
habitat of those lately departed? There are 
many testimonies from what we call the ^^ be- 
yond" which would indicate this. In the little 
book entitled ^^Gone "West" which contains the 
automatically written messages from the late 
Dr. L. S. Mitchell of Minneapolis, he says that 
our ^^ worlds are really one. We see the astral 
or real side of the same objects you behold and 
even enjoy many of the same pleasures, notably 
music, though our ears are attuned to many 
higher vibrations of sound which are not re- 
vealed to you." Again he says: '^ ^Here' and 
'There^ are so interrelated that there really 
is no separation." 

Such statements as these combined with the 
photographic impression of a crowd of spirits 
as reproduced by Mr. Hereward Carrington 
from Mrs. Dupont Lee 's photograph in his lat- 
est volume, ^^ Modern Psychical Phenomena," 
would strongly suggest the interpenetration 
of the first spiritual realm with our own world. 



MATERIALIZATION MS 

In this realm, as in other planetary spheres, 
some substance existing in the air or atmos- 
phere is manipulated by the discarnate, it would 
appear. As to the formation of the ethereal or 
spiritual body out of matter and magnetism, my 
sister's statement definitely illustrates the ex- 
periments of Col. de Rochas, who was able to 
isolate and photograph the magnetic emana- 
tions from the living human body. 

Correspondences between the statements of 
the discamate and the experiments of living 
investigators are numerous. The thought 
forms, beautifully drawn and colored, which 
have been published by Mr. Leadbeater and 
Miss Besant are precisely those which trans- 
cendental communicators describe. Dr. Mitchell 
relates, for instance, *^that he had been having 
regular lessons in the use of thought force. 
First I was shown how one could see thought 
forms. They are colored vibrations. Next I 
was given experiments in using the power to 
materialize objects.'' Dr. Mitchell describes a 
concourse of heaven dwellers in a temple vv^ho 
sent out a mass of golden thought over the 
battlefields, and over Turkey, there finding just 
the red and purple thought emanations of ha- 
tred and violence which represent those pas- 
sions according to the records of Mr. Lead- 
beater. 



244. A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

It now devolves upon me to record a recent 
experience of my own in witnessing the phe- 
nomena of materialization. 

On the 18th of December, 1919, I went with 
the Eev. Elwood Worcester and his nephew, 
Eev. Worcester Perkins, to Concord, Mass. 
There lives William Foss, well known to the 
late Prof. James and a man of nnquestionable 
repute in Concord, where he has spent his long 
life of nearly sixty-eight years. There were 
present at the sitting, which took place in Mr. 
Foss's house, his wife, who is blind but en- 
dowed with olaiirvoyant vision, his son and 
daughter-in-law, the Eev. Mr. Garrett, and my- 
seK. A table, nearly six feet square, occupied 
a large part of the kitchen and around it were 
wooden armchairs which on two sides were 
closely set between it and the walls of the room. 
Two persons sat at each end of the table and 
on either side of the table. Mr. Foss and Mr. 
Garrett sat in two chairs between the table 
and the wall; Dr. Worcester and his nephew 
sat in the two chairs at the end of the table; 
next the wall Mrs. Foss and her daughter-in- 
law sat in the chairs at the side of the table op- 
posite Mr. Foss and Mr. Garrett; Mr. Foss's 
son and I sat at the end of the table opposite 
Dr. Worcester and Mr. Perkins. We all held 
each other's hands during the sitting. After 



MATERIALIZATION 245 

the singing of some songs a cold breeze blew 
through the room ; then the table, the chairs and 
the entire room shook as if on a rocking boat. 
Then as a first evidence of materialization, 
warm and living hands touched my hair, my 
shoulders, my face, in many repeated caresses. 
Mrs. Foss, through her clairvoyant vision in- 
formed me that she saw a woman whom she 
announced was my sister. A bit of chalk had 
been put in the middle of the table. Soon 
there was a sound of writing and then a signal 
to turn up the light. I had previously asked 
my sister to try to write something in her own 
handwriting. When the light flooded the room 
I saw, written directly in front of me, the name 
she called herself as a child. This name was 
known to no being in that room except myself. 
I affirm that I was holding the hands of Mr. 
Foss's son and his wife, and that I did not touch 
the chalk. After the name was written my 
hand was grasped and the chalk put into my 
fingers. Another written message from my sis- 
ter in answer to a mental question of my own 
was : ^ ' We are happy. ' ' 

I then asked her if she could write a message 
in regard to my husband in her own handwrit- 
ing. She attempted to do this, writing my 
husband's name very clearly and directly in 



M6 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

front of me upon the table, but interfering with 
her message were two lateral series of Hebrew 
characters — some ancient spirit having evi- 
dently intervened. 

Later, I asked my sister if she could go to 
Chicago and tell me something about my hus- 
band. The message she left upon the table in 
answer to this was ^^ Proof, I will try.*' After 
a half hour had passed by my hand was grasped, 
rapid knocks were made upon the table, writing 
was heard and again the chalk was put into my 
hand. When the light was turned up again, 
directly in front of me upon the table we saw 
the two words ^'Sold to-day.'' The satisfac- 
tion expressed in the character of the knocks 
and the way my hand was grasped and turned 
over were justified by the success of the test, 
which she was able to bring to us. 

On my return to New York on Friday, De- 
cember 19th, I was informed that my husband 
had sent a telegram from Chicago accepting a 
proposition for the sale of a piece of property. 

Very soon after this, a curious sound of sob- 
bing was heard in the air and the blind Mrs. 
Foss declared it was my sister expressing her 
emotion at being able to make her presence 
known. Again when another communicator 
mischievously refused to carry out some of the 
requests of the sitters I said, ''Will our kind 



MATERIALIZATION 247 

friends be good enough to hasten, for I am very- 
tired? I have come a long journey and must go 
again early in the morning to New York." 
Then distinctly a voice said, ^ ^ God bless you for 
coming. ' ^ 

During the sitting a very loud sound of writ- 
ing was heard with the chalk, and when the 
light was turned up a message from Prof. 
James was found mth his signature recognized 
as accurate by Dr. Worcester. Then again 
in the darkness his hand, recognized by Dr. 
Worcester, grasped his hand giving him the 
Phi Beta Kappa grip. Upon Dr. Worcester's 
statement that he had recognized the form of 
Prof. James' hand and the old college grip, 
three loud affirmative knocks were heard upon 
the table. 

Other personalities appeared at this remark- 
able seance but nothing so evidential as the two 
tests which my sister was able to give to us. 

Mr. Foss has been possessed of this remark- 
able materializing power since early youth and 
relates examples of materialized formations 
and communications from individualities long 
known to him, which, according to him, are far 
more remarkable than the manifestations which 
I witnessed. No conament is necessary to em- 
phasize the impression of my sister's actual 



^48 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

presence. Her emotion at being able to speak 
with me, her words, her gentle touch upon my 
brow bring it to me as never before the convic- 
tion that there are indeed no dead. 



CHAPTER X 
And Our Last Enemy is Death 

THREE objections are commonly advanced 
by the ignorant and inexperienced against 
an acceptance of the possibility of communica- 
tion. The first is that it is due to * ^ telepathy. ' ' 
The second, that messages purporting to come 
from the beyond really proceed from the ' ' sub- 
conscious mind/' Third, that if the messages 
are actual communications from the so-called 
dead, they are too trivial in character to com- 
mand respectful attention. 

In regard to telepathy, it is pertinent to quote 
its exact definition as demonstrated by the Eng- 
lish Society for Psychic Research. ' ' Telepathy 
is the transference of thought from one mind 
to another without visible means of such trans- 
ference. '^ Telepathy, used as a refutation of 
the assertion of the possibility of communica- 
tion between the discarnate and the incarnate, 
presents no valid argument. Rather does it 
expose the undifferentiated thought of the mul- 
titude. Allowing that such a means of com- 
munication does exist between incarnate minds, 

249 



250 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

it does not deny an apparently similar process 
of commnnication between tlie discarnate and 
tlie incarnate. Eather does it present a work- 
ing hypothesis of such communication. 

Again, the transference of thoughts from the 
subconscious mind of the medium to his active 
mind or from the subconscious minds of the ex- 
perimenters, is urged as an explanation of all 
messages of apparently supernatural origin. 
As in supernormal telepathic messages, so in 
these subconscious emanations, one test and 
one alone is crucial, as to their origin. Do they 
convey information absolutely new to both me- 
dium and experimenter? If they do and this 
information is capable of verification, then we 
must deny their normal or human origin — at 
least until some hitherto unsuspected human 
faculty is discovered, which can account for 
their reception. 

To the last objection as to the triviality of 
the messages, is it pertinent to enquire if it is 
not the most natural, nay, the inevitable method 
of attempted identification, to refer to definite 
occurrences or objects known commonly to 
both the unseen communicator and the experi- 
menter? Would it not be the ideal method to 
supply information unknown to the experimen- 
ter and of such definite and practical signifi- 
cance as to permit of verification? 



OUR LAST ENEMY 251 

Those who are acquainted with the literature 
of the subject and with the records of the 
various societies for Psychical Eesearch are 
aware of a large number of published messages 
from the illuminated inhabitants of the Other 
World, which contain instruction of a highly 
spiritual character, and of a mass of material 
still unpublished, for the reason that it does not 
contain this evidential and so-called trivial 
material. 

"Was the significance of the first message of 
the Morse telegraph considered to be impor- 
tant? Was not the fact that the message was 
transferred and its transference verified all 
important? As to the transference of thought 
waves from the subconscious mind of the me- 
dium to his active mind, and from the subcon- 
scious minds of the experimenters to the con- 
scious or the subconscious mind of the medium, 
it is indisputable that such transference does 
very frequently take place. In the immediate 
and even distant environment of the medium, 
endowed apparently with a receiving apparatus 
capable of registering thought waves, various 
entities, incarnate and discarnate, may exist, 
each sending out these waves, each speaking a 
wireless language. What then seems more cer- 
tain than that such an apparatus in the brain of 
the psychic should register all or any of the 



252 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

thoughts thus propagated? Because, then, a 
living being speaks in this involuntary projec- 
tion of thought waves, is it not possible that a 
discarnate being should also thus speak, vol- 
untarily or involuntarily? 

The subconscious mind, which has long been 
the particular province of Psychology, has been 
adopted by Psychic Science as a promising 
field of exploration, as the repository of unsus- 
pected and so-called supernormal powers in 
man, as a means of communication with the 
*^ cosmic reservoir,'' as the guardian of all 
memories, as the larger and enduring part of 
the human soul. Through the open door in this 
subconscious mind, do floods of inspiration pour 
in from the infinite? Such is the theory of Mr. 
Myers, who, in an illuminating chapter, defines 
genius as a '^subliminal uprush." 

From artists, poets and musicians, from in- 
ventors and from cordons bleux comes the in- 
variable testimony that the inspiration of their 
best accomplishments is dictated to them. 
Sometimes with exaltation, sometimes with an 
atmosphere of serene solemnity, this inspira- 
tion comes, and the sensation of the smooth 
and uninterrupted current of suggestion aris- 
ing from the depth of the subconscious to the 
active executing brain, is one which is experi- 
enced by every individual possessed of creative 



OUR LAST ENEMY 253 

imagination. The very word — inspiration — in 
its universally accepted significance, defines the 
process. Are the faculties resident in this 
mysterious indefinable and uncharted region 
of the human spirit intrinsic? Are the powers 
not rather commanded and utilized by super- 
normal guardians and masters, whose dwelling 
is in infinite knowledge ? Does the subconscious 
mind lie open to those influences 1 So the meta- 
phor of Sir Oliver Lodge, who compares it to 
*^an iceberg whose submerged and larger part 
is subject to the ocean tides," would indicate. 
Although subconscious, this part of the hu- 
man mind is apparently never idle, but sends 
out constant waves of thought which are regis- 
tered, not only upon the surrounding ether, but 
inevitably upon the receiving apparatus of all 
psychics. The possibility that the messages 
are thus received by their peculiarly organized 
brain ganglia, must therefore be fully recog- 
nized and the significance of all messages ex- 
amined in the light of this possibility. Un- 
conscious dramatization, even impersonation of 
character, infinitely mysterious and most dis- 
concerting to the experimenter, must also be 
recognized as a faculty of this perplexing por- 
tion of the human organism. From the deep 
recesses of this unfathomable part of us, for- 
gotten or fortuitous records of facts may 



S54 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

emerge, so that no proof of any communication 
from beyond is acceptable, unless it contains 
information absolutely new to both medium 
and experimenter. Fortunately for the in- 
creasing numbers of believers in survival and 
communication, a large volume of information 
of this crucial order exists and can be examined 
by any honest inquirer. 

In pursuing such an investigation, the honest 
inquirer should beware of the possibility of an 
altered attitude regarding facts of such illimit- 
able importance; for they are facts, no longer 
subject to denial or contempt. It is not beyond 
the scope of dejfinite assertion to declare that 
no investigator of intelligence, approaching 
this subject without prejudice and prepared to 
use his reason, has ever emerged from such an 
examination a determined skeptic. No more 
rigid method of proof and investigation can be 
devised than that already applied to these phe- 
nomena. It has remained for the elite of the 
intellects of all civilized nations to attack these 
mysteries, and their united affirmation regard- 
ing their reality and their testimony regarding 
their high significance cannot be disregarded. 

Mr. Arthur Balfour and his brother Gerald, 
their sister, Mrs. Sidgwick, and her husband, 
Myers, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Sir William Barrett, Euskin, Wallace and Sir 



OUR LAST ENEMY 265 

Conan Doyle in England, are witnesses who 
must be heard. In France, the names of Eichet, 
Bergson, Janet, Flammarion, de Eochas, De- 
lanne, Boirac, Maxwell, Kardec, Schrenck-Not- 
zing, Geley and Madame Bisson. In Italy, Lom- 
broso, Morseli and Schiaparelli ; in Switzer- 
land, Prof. Floumoy; in Holland, Profs. Malta 
and Van Zelst; in Eussia, Atsakoff, swell the 
distinguished list of scientific investigators. In 
America, Prof. Hare of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, the leading chemist of our country in 
his day; Prof. James of Harvard, Judge Ed- 
munds, Mr. Epes Sargent of literary fame, as 
well as Drs. Hodgson and Hyslop, have ad3ed 
their records of investigation and personal ex- 
periment to the mass of testimony. It is a 
testimony wonderfully similar in its main lines 
of deduction and of theory, based on scientific 
investigation and the concordant information 
from beyond. 

Certain facts emerge clearly from all the rec- 
ords of communication. First, the individual, 
immediately after death, is entirely unchanged. 
Growth in spirituality is the inevitable road 
which each soul is destined to follow. Environ- 
ment is determined by the degree of develop- 
ment. The discarnate spirit is possessed of 
powers of creative construction increasing with 
practice and experience. It is a world of spirit, 



^56 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

but not of spirit alone; spirit is so supreme 
that more insistence is placed upon its supe- 
rior activities than upon the fact that it has 
something material to act upon. That materia] 
has been called the ether, and out of it all 
objects known to the ethereal world are com- 
posed. But it can be manipulated with infinite 
ease and all objects retained for aeons or dis- 
carded in a moment according to desire. There 
are purely mental vibrations and there are 
^ ^ constructional vibrations ' ' of ether, according 
to information given to me through Mrs. Ver- 
non. These * ^ constructional vibrations ^ ' corre- 
spond, as I have also been told, to manual ma- 
nipulations of matter on the earth. But upon 
ethereal matter, these vibrations operate with- 
out hands. 

A correspondence with this method is observ- 
able with the geometrical patterns formed in 
sand under the impact of sound waves. Pos- 
sessed, however, of unlimited powers of pro- 
jecting images the inhabitants of the other 
world can fashion temporary environments 
wholly out of their own imaginations or mem- 
ories, it would seem, which have a reality quite 
as definite to themselves and to each other as 
objects made out of the ether, or as our objects 
are to us. A published incident, which seems 
to illustrate this power in the discarnate, is re- 



OUR LAST ENEMY 257 

corded in the book called ''An Adventure/* 
where two ladies walked into the Park of the 
Petit Trianon of Marie Antoinette's memory, 
as she might have projected it. There were 
the old walks, and lakes and trees ; there were 
the wheelbarrow and the gardener of her day; 
there was the Queen herself, in the simple dress 
in which it had been her pleasure to clothe her- 
self in that lost garden of her dreams — dreams 
so vivid and so potent that the eyes of strangers 
found them more real than its modem and 
actual appearance. 

Thus there appear to be two distinct methods 
of creative activity in the other world; one, an 
entirely mental projection of images ; the other, 
a mental manipulation of the * ' ether. ' ' These 
two distinct methods probably account for the 
apparent disagreement in the testimony from 
beyond, regarding the construction of the other 
world. 

All knowledge is not immediately given to 
souls discamate, who still seek, at least in the 
earlier stages of their evolution, for the solution 
of the secrets of creation. The practical and 
material minded individualities such as Kay- 
mond, rejoicing in a solid-seeming world, pro- 
pound the theory that some sort of matter is 
utilized in the making of that world. Others 
see only the agency of the spirit. Spirit, al- 



258 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

ways the supreme agent, seems to be the har- 
monizing basis of both processes, that which 
utilizes purely mental vibrations, as well as that 
which uses the constructional vibrations, which 
seem to collect or condense the substance called 
ether for use in the formation of temples of 
learning, and of music, or the houses intended 
to serve a more permanent use perhaps, than 
the vanishing projections of pure imagination. 
"We are told in all transcendental communi- 
cations that the body of the discarnate soul is 
made of this ethereal substance, but that the 
soul can fashion for itself its earthly appear- 
ance and habiliments at will. Is this the spir- 
itual body of St. Paul, the non-material part of 
us which we already possess? Science itself 
has opened the door to this hypothesis. When 
the statement of Haeckel that the brain atoms 
had properties which initiated or exuded 
thought was denied, when scientists themselves 
asserted that between the brain atoms a space 
existed, filled with so-called ' ' mentif erous 
ether,'' then indeed, we were permitted to im- 
agine the essence of the ethereal body and its 
incarnate existence. When, then, this ethereal 
body escapes from its material encasement, 
does it not, like the Psyche of the Greeks, fly 
into this ethereal realm, its proper element and 
home? 



OUR LAST ENEMY 259 

Possessed still of all its earthly memories and 
loves, manipulating that telepathic power, now 
proved to belong to the self-incarnate, would 
not that unchanged self send thought vibrations 
to those ready and waiting to receive them? 
Illustrating the analogy of this means of com- 
munication with the universal wave theory of 
heat and light and sound, would not the vibrat- 
ing thoughts of those lost to our sight seek 
often and sometimes find the organisms pre- 
pared to receive them? 

The messages I have received are published 
with the hope that they may add versimilitude 
to this analogy and help to confirm the resulting 
hypothesis, that by this method the dead indeed 
do speak, and by permission and in strict ac- 
cordance with universal law. 

While ignorance and indifference present bas- 
tions of solid opposition to the advancing 
torches of the new-old truths of spiritual con- 
tinuity, Science and Eeligion go forth to give 
them battle. The priests of Padua who refused 
to look through Galileo's telescope, have been 
followed by those who fought the beneficent 
agent of anesthesia, who denied the phenome- 
non of hypnotism, and those who first derided 
telepathy, only to use it later as their chief 
arm, with which to combat transcendental com- 
munication. 



^60 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

The last and most tenaciously held hypothesis 
of those who would, at all sacrifice of logical 
reasoning and of probability, deny the facts of 
communication and survival, is that the mind 
of the psychic can take up messages from the 
air or ether as does the wireless telegraph. To 
perceive the messages which bear information 
unknown to both psychic and sitter, they as- 
sume that the psychic must possess a selective 
power by which, out of all the illimitable num- 
ber of thoughts which are recorded in the 
ether of the earthplane, the exact message des- 
tined for the sitter may be singled out. Not 
one attested incident has been hitherto re- 
corded, which proves that such a power, prac- 
tically omniscient in its extent, is possessed by 
any medium, and no attempt by the skeptics 
has yet been made to explain the method by 
which this power can be exercised. **An ex- 
tension of telepathy'' is the expression which 
represents the effort of such distinguished in- 
dividuals as the editor of a serious magazine 
and the bishop of an English see, to explain all 
messages which come from the earth plane by 
means of this wholly hypothetical ^* selective 
power" of the medium. This, they assert, is 
an *^easy explanation'' of the reception of in- 
formation, altho it is unknown to both psychic 
and sitter. In this attempt to account for such 



OUR LAST ENEMY 261 

messages their reasoning seems to proceed 
somewhat in this maimer : 

If the mind of the psychic possesses this se- 
lective power, then this power would account 
for messages bearing information unknown to 
both medium and experimenter. Therefore the 
psychic does possess this power. To such lacu- 
nas in logic does the determination not to ac- 
cept the glorious facts of communication and 
survival force these distinguished gentlemen. 

Their attitude resembles that of a fugitive 
driven to the last ledge over a precipice. Above 
him are impassable heights, below him is the 
yawning chasm. Thus, driven to a last extrem- 
ity, the hunted man utters unreasoning cries 
of distress and resorts to any desperate move 
which offers a last chance of escape. Yet, if 
the fugitive should fall into the chasm, what 
would await him? The wings of angels would 
bear him up to that very immortality which 
has been the teaching of the bishop, we may 
believe, since he first assumed the office of a 
teacher of the Gospel. 

When, then, shall the pealing of every church 
bell, the echo of every hymn, the symbol of the 
cross, the mounting spires of every shrine, be 
accorded their eternal significance as fortified 
and a thousand times over proved, by the dis- 
coveries of the new Psychic Science? How long 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

will facts of such incalculable importance, from 
the viewpoint of their own teaching, be denied 
by these teachers 1 

As to the assumption of a harmony in thought 
currents analogous to those of the ether waves 
of the wireless telegraphy, it must be proved 
by many attested examples before it can be used 
as a basis for this easy explanation of an * * ex- 
tension of telepathy/' 

The impact of physical emanations of mag- 
netism may give rise to a simple concept, or 
vague sensations such as the *' warning '* of 
the imminent meeting with a friend, and might 
present a partial analogy to the method by 
which wireless messages are transmitted. This 
analogy, however, is incomplete, in that these 
messages or warniags amount only to sensa- 
tions, wordless and undifferentiated, and wholly 
unlike the elaborate phrases by which definite 
information is conveyed to the psychic. 

As before stated the most rigid tests of the 
origin of apparently supernormal messages 
must be satisfied before certainty of transcen- 
dental communication is attained. That no 
knowledge of the information in a message 
should be possessed by any liviQg being on 
the earth plane, should be certain, in the face 
of the enormous significance of the possibility 
of communication. Among the multitude of 



OUR LAST ENEMY 263 

messages which by no possibility could have 
emanated from any individual on the earth 
plane, consider that received by the late Mrs. 
Verrall of Cambridge, by automatic handwrit- 
ing, of the English Society for Psychical Ee- 
search and afterward quoted by Maeterlinck in 
his book ' * L ^Hote inconnu. * ' 

At eleven o'clock one evening, Mrs. VerralPs 
hand wrote, in Latin, Greek and English, a mes- 
sage which informed her that at last a proof 
would be given her which would satisfy her, 
and through her, would convince many others 
that communication was possible. The proof 
would come from *Hhe chalk upon the feet." 
The message was signed by a drawing of a bird 
walking. 

At half past two the following morning, that 
is, four and a half hours later, two men, who 
had heard that in certain chambers on the other 
side of London strange occurrences had taken 
place, had prepared to investigate them. They 
covered the floors with scraped chalk. Then 
they extinguished the lights. They were alone 
in the rooms. After several hours of waiting, 
they turned up the lights and there, plainly seen 
in the chalk, were five tracks of bird's feet. 
Mrs. Verrall had never heard of these experi- 
menters ; they had never heard of her. We can 
hardly deny a considerable ingenuity to the 



864 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

Latin and Greek writing spirits, who devised 
this extraordinary test. 

No impact of thought waves from the earth 
plane could account for this prophetic announce- 
ment. Nor an extension of telepathy. 

The fact that Mr. Myers failed to send, after 
his death, the correct sentence, which, before 
death, he had written in a sealed envelope, is 
often quoted; while an incident of the success 
of a bef ore-death test, recorded in Myers' own 
book, is by preference, apparently, omitted. 
This incident will be found in the appendix of 
his ^^ Human Personality and Its Survival of 
Bodily Death.'' 

The reason for the failure of Mr. Myers is 
suggested by Miss Dallas in her book, *^Mors 
Janua Vitae," where she ascribes it to the 
subconscious suggestion of Mrs. Verrall's own 
mind, combined with an incorrect assumption 
that another message, really from Mr. Myers, 
but unconnected with the letter, was the mes- 
sage in the letter. No notice, moreover, has 
been taken by those, who seem to rejoice at Mr. 
Myers' apparent failure in this case, of the re- 
markable tests of his surviving intelligence, ob- 
tained by Mr. Dorr of Boston, through Mrs. 
Piper, and recorded in the book of Miss Anna 
Hude, as well as in the Journal of the Ameri- 
can Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Dorr, 



OUR LAST ENEMY 265 

conceiving that he might obtain important reac- 
tions from Mr. Myers if he read aloud while 
Mr. Myers was in possession of Mrs. Piper's 
organism, certain passages from books known 
in life to Mr. Myers, read ten lines from Dry- 
den's translation of Virgil. Instantly Mrs. 
Piper's directed hand wrote the two lines which 
in the original text followed the quotation, but 
in Mr, Myers' own translation. The first two 
lines of the Dryden quotation were also given, 
but again in a translation from the original text 
which was apparently retained in its entirety 
in Mr. Myers' memory. Again ten lines from 
Shelley's translation of the *' Cyclops" of Eu- 
ripides were quoted by Mr. Dorr. 

*^ You read well," wrote Mrs. Piper's hand. 

*^Now," said Mr. Dorr, *'see if you can tell 
who made this translation?" 

^^Did he write the ^Ode to the Skylark?' " 
answered Mr. Myers. 

Upon Mr. Dorr's exclamation of satisfaction 
at this reply Mr. Myers wrote, *^ Thank you! 
If I am not Myers, who am I?" 

The retention in the discarnate memory of its 
stores of information and of learning has no- 
where a more startling example. 

As to the confirmation of all the so-called 
miracles in Holy Writ, they furnish such in- 
dubitable examples of the so-called super- 



266 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

normal powers in man, that their explanation, 
in the light of the investigation and classifica- 
tion of these powers, should fill the empty 
chnrch benches and diminish the activities of all 
higher critics. 

The many incidents of slate writing, for in- 
stance, where the writing has appeared with 
lightning rapidity on both sides of the slate si- 
multaneously, might furnish illuminating sug- 
gestions as to the method by which the ten 
commandments were written on both sides of 
the tablets. 

So, may not the Jewish law, as well as the 
Christian revelation, both originate in direct 
intervention and actual inspiration from on 
High? All the after-death appearances of 
Christ ; the miracles of healing, the materializa- 
tion of the loaves and the fishes, the levitation 
of Christ's body as he walked upon the waves, 
prove, not only, that phenomena now called 
psychic were used as powerful agents in the 
formation of the Christian sect, but that Christ 
himself, a son of God, was the worker of these 
miracles, through his control of matter and its 
laws. 

The reviving belief that man is of a tripar- 
tite organism composed of body, soul, and spir- 
it, is definitely stated by St. Paul. Such has 
been the belief of the ancient races. The Kar 



OUR LAST ENEMY 267 

of the Egyptians is the Latin Imago, and the 
Greek Eidolon, In the Ishtar tablets (B.C. 
2250) there is a record of materialization. 

^ ' The spirit of Heabani, like glass, transpar- 
ent from the earth, arose.'' 

The rejection by some modern schools of 
philosophy of the notion of two soul essences, 
a spirit and a spirit body, has the portentous 
and fatal significance of reducing the spirit, 
when once deprived of its material encasement, 
to an indefinable, abstract and indivisible prin- 
ciple, having neither extension, form, nor con- 
ceivable substance. Upon the tripartite con- 
ception of the human organism all hope of the 
preservation of identity depends. Deprived of 
its ethereal incasement it sinks like a drop of 
water into the ocean of infinity. This philoso- 
phy is reactionary, reversing the intuitive wis- 
dom of the ages, disagreeing with the great 
masters of antiquity, such as Plato and Aris- 
totle, and with the records of tablet and scroll, 
found not only on the Egyptian stones but in 
the ancient parchments of so-called revealed 
religion. 

Now, indeed the old theory of an ethereal 
body arises again with many proofs of its def- 
inite and independent existence and activities 
even before the dissolution of its material 
envelope. 



268 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

In tlie legends of the ^^Doppelganger'' we 
have the proof of the German belief in the 
ethereal double, and now with a characterist- 
ically accurate power of making a term of per- 
fectly descriptive significance, we have the scien- 
tific French statement of a belief in the spiritual 
encasement, in the word ''Peresprit.'' 

M. Delanne, in his book ^-L'Ame est Immor- 
telle,'' relates an attested incident of a woman's 
voluntary and prearranged projection of her 
peresprit into a photographic gallery. There 
not only was the peresprit photographed; but 
while the photographer was in his cabinet in the 
process of developing the negative, the pere- 
sprit, by what power one cannot know, was able 
to throw the photographic apparatus upon the 
floor.* 

Normal activities, such as are possessed by 
the material body, do not seem to be lacking 
in the ethereal double, as is proved by the in- 
cident related by the well-known Dr. Vittoz of 
Lausanne, who, by intention, traveled in this 
ethereal dress to a cafe in Berlin. There he 
took his place at a table, with one companion, 
and then after some conversation returned to 
Lausanne. 

A few weeks afterward while walking in a 
street of Lausanne, he encountered a man who 

* Published by Mr. Stead in '^Borderland," April, 1896. 



OUR LAST ENEMY 269 

seemed strangely familiar. While lie was try- 
ing to recollect where he had seen him, the 
friend of the Berlin cafe walked up to him, say- 
ing that he was pleased to have again met him 
and was anxious to renew their agreeable con- 
versation. There are thus, it would appear, 
various phenomena which will not be explained 
by ' ^ an extension of telepathy. ' ' 

In the long journey from half -conscious ani- 
mal to the cloud-reaching heights of conscious 
Divinity, man's knowledge of the secrets of 
creation may be an attainable goal. We may 
even now, in this remarkable age of human 
progress and change, be entering a new stage 
of evolution. Powers unclassified, although 
long manifested, now have their accepted names 
and significance. By telepathy we know we can 
speak ; by projection some human beings travel 
to distances, away from their still living ma- 
terial forms. A voice may be photographed 
and, by the telephone, heard across oceans and 
continents. Wireless vibrations carry messages 
and voices over miles of intervening ether. 
Thought images can be photographed. Thought 
can move electric needles. The X-ray sees 
through solids and the cinematograph records 
objects in motion, even the infinitesimal crea- 
tures which swim in the drops of water. We 
have conquered the air. Surely the boundary 



270 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

betwixt matter and spirit grows wonderfully 
thin. We know now that the matter of which 
we are made is dissolvable and that it is manip- 
ulated by thought. The enormous significance 
of this discovery points to an amazing and, as 
yet, scarcely realized extension of our under- 
standing of the constitution of matter and of 
our own ultimate destiny, when finally possessed 
of a full knowledge of the laws of the universe. 

The dissolvable quality of the matter of which 
our bodies are made was proved, not only by 
the experiment of Prof. Schrenck-Notzing and 
Dr. Geley, but also by those of Dr. Crawford, 
when at his behest his unseen colaborators re- 
moved a portion of the weight of his medium. 
If this is possible, according to the observa- 
tion of these unquestionably reliable witnesses, 
may not the time arrive when complete de- 
materialization of the human body may also 
be possible! 

Would this be the manner in which, accord- 
ing to St. Paul in that truly inspired chapter in 
Corinthians, **we shall not all die, but be 
changed' '? Is this the *'Far off divine event 
towards which the whole creation moves"? In 
this way perhaps death, the last enemy, shall be 
conquered. Thus, perhaps, when they have 
learned aU that it is intended that they shall 
ultimately learn in this earthly existence the 



OUR LAST ENEMY ' 271 

sons of men shall put on immortality. Thus, 
fashioned after his likeness out of one sub- 
stance, dissolvable and mutable under Divine 
law, our remote descendants may change, **in a 
moment, ' ' into the shining garments of eternity, 
and, to the sound of the trumpet of triumphant 
attainment, may scale the heights of heaven. 
We know already what our destiny is, for it is 
explained to us in every whisper which comes 
to us along the heavenly wires. It is spiritual 
development and this is the inevitable law of 
this upward progress. The mystic realization 
of ** harmony with law'' is the word of life 
eternal. This realization is purely ecstatic, as 
all who have experienced it will testify. ^^Un- 
derneath me are the Everlasting Arms ' ' is only 
another expression of the rapture of conscious 
union with all laws, which are themselves the 
expression of God's will and design. So to the 
mystic, incarnate or discamate, all nature is 
harmonious; to him the far horizon beckons; 
with flowers and music he is at one. At one, 
also, with all souls who glimpse the wonder and 
profundity of the ever unfolding plan of Divin- 
ity. 

No longer is he solitary in the limitless uni- 
verse whose wonders are his inalienable in- 
heritance. 

Such we may imagine is the inexpressible joy 



272 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

of those who in heaven's own light **bask in 
the glory of spirituality, pervading the uni- 
verse with beneficence'' of which my trans- 
lated sister has told me. 

As to the varieties of man-made doctrine, 
themselves derived from the aspirations of hu- 
manity towards God, they will not be main- 
tained, we are told. Not those which have, 
through the long ages, lost the simplicity of 
the early revelation. In the recurring circles 
of human thought, scientific investigation has 
brought the present comprehension of Christ's 
early teachings and his miraculous deeds nearer 
to the original circle of primitive Christian 
revelation than since the days when He first 
walked in Galilee. 

*^I venture now a bold saying," said Fred- 
erick Myers, in his published book. *^I predict 
that in consequence of the new evidence all rea- 
sonable men, a century hence, will believe in the 
Eesurrection of Christ; whereas in default of 
the new evidence no reasonable man a century 
hence would have believed it. ' ' 

What matter if doctrines must pass, when we 
know that in all the stars of heaven the Christ 
spirit is supreme; when the essential truth of 
the religion which he taught pervades with 
thunders of overpowering light the remotest 
regions of eternity? 



OUR LAST ENEMY 273 

In messages from beyond, the glorified spirit 
of Frederick Myers has spoken of Christ as the 
"Highest spirit known to us,'* and again he 
calls him "The Living One.*' So to humanity 
ascended, Christ is still Lord, and descending 
from those infinitely far heights of contempla- 
tion beside the throne of God, He still lives 
to instruct and to aid the spirits of men in- 
carnate and discarnate. In Him the personality ' 
of God has its eternal and supreme incarna- 
tion. 

"Eeligion, or religions,'' so speaks a spirit 
teacher, "are tutors of young souls; images 
given to those incarnate during the infancy of 
their evolution, in order that in their memories, 
conduct, and duty alike shall persist, in the 
pursuit of that progress whose laws they obey. 
But like the child who leaves his parents' arms 
as soon as he feels that his limbs will support 
him, the incarnate soul escapes from the bonds 
of dogma, as soon as it feels that it is strong 
and courageous enough to fly alone and unaided 
towards its eternal abode." 

Message by automatic handwriting received by Madame 
de W. and published in her book, *'Ceux qui nous quittent." 
Paris, 1917. 

THE END 



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